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Q^ ANiNIVERSARY 



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OF 



Ye Ancient Church in 
Windsor, Conn* 

Organized in Plymouth, England, previous to sailing 
March 30, 1630. 




THE PRESENT HOUSE OF WORSHIP, ERECTED ,794, RENEWED ,845. 

CUT OF THE HOUSE BEFORE RENEWAU Page 7c. 



A RECORD OF THE SERVICES 



HELD AT THE 



Congregational Church 



WINDSOR, CONN., 



IN CELEBRATION OF ITS 



TWO HUNDRED AND FIFTIETH ANNIVERSARY, 



MARCH 30, IhSO. 



Lord, thou ha?t been our dwelling place in all generations.— Psa. 90: 1. 




PUBLISHED EY THE CHURCH. 

1880. 



^ 



^0^ 



The Case, Lockwood & Brainaud Company, Printers, Hartford, Conn. 



CONTENTS. 



Paper by Pastor, on History of the Church from the 

FIRST, 8 

Paper by Dea. J. H. Hayden, on the Old Meeting houses, 50 

Paper by Dea. J. B. Woodford, on certain financial mat- 
ters of the past, 72 

Address by Leonard Bacon, D.D., 36 

Poem by I. N. Tarbox, D.D., 43 

Paper on Old-time Singing, 89 

Afternoon Addresses, 49 

Evening Addresses, 89 



^'4' 




^*% 




PRELTMINAKY ACTION OF TlIK CIIUIICII. 



At its annual meeting in January, the Congregational 
Church of Windsor voted '• suitably to celebrate the approach- 
ing two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of this Church ; " and 
Dea. J. B. Woodford, Dea. Daniel Payne, Samuel B. Hayden, 
William Bailey, and Dr. Samuel A. Wilson were chosen a 
committee to cooperate with the Pastor, Gowen C. Wilson, in 
making the necessary arrangements, and nominating special 
committees to carry out the different parts of the programme 
which should l)e adopted for that day. 

Subsequently committees were appointed Ijy tlie Church, on 
their nomination, on printing and invitation ; on music ; on 
decoration of the church ; on providing food and spreading 
and attending tables for entertainment of guests ; on horses 
and conveyances ; on finance ; and on entertainment. 

It was voted to invite the following churches to unite with 
us in the celebration : 

Church in South Windsor, Church in Bloomfield, Church in 
Windsor Locks, Church in Poquonnock, First Church, Hart- 
ford, and Church in Wethersfield. 

Invitations were sent also to all who had any personal 
interest in the Church through previous membership or de- 
scent from any of its old members. A few other guests were 
invited also, for special reasons. 

The committees all accepted their appointments, and did 
their part heartily and eflficiently. 

The ladies waited upon and fed about five hundred people 
at dinner and supper, and had provision made for half as 
many more. Of them a guest writes : — " They acquitted 
themselves nobly, generously, grandly, — every way to their 
credit." 



A brief description of the cliurch fi-om one of tlie Hartford 
• dailies, says : " Tlie old cliurcli wliicli stands on the bank of 
the river was tastefully dressed with wreaths and festoons of 
evergreens, and the pulpit completely banked in a choice 
display of hot-house flowers very artistically arranged. Over 
the pulpit and connecting both galleries was a large arch 
trimmed with evergreens, and from either side of this hung 
a large American and English flag, bearing iji gilt letters the 
dates respectively of 1880 and 1630. The arch bore this in- 
scription, in old English letters : ' Lord, Thou hast been our 
dwelling place in all generations.' Along the sides of the 
gallery were neatly painted panels bearing the names of all 
the Pastors who had been set over the Church, each with his 
appropriate date." 

Among the floral decorations shoidd be named a center- 
piece in front of the pulpit having in large figures 250 made 
with carnation pinks on a white ground ; and a fine pillow of 
variegated flowers upon the right of tlie pulpit ; and two 
large century plants, with another about half grown. 

The tables were spread in the new Town Hall on Broad- 
street, and carriages and omnibuses provided to carry all the 
guests from the church to the hall and liack, as well as to and 
from the railroad station. 

The day dawned quite pleasant, after several days of storm 
which made the roads very bad for traveling by carriage ; yet 
the attendance from the neiglil)oring Chui-ches was quite large, 
and many from aljroad were present to join in the services 
of the day. Among the many guests in attendance were 
Rev. Spofford D. Jewctt and Rev. Theodore A. Leete, ))oth 
of whom had been previously pastors of this Church ; also. 
Rev. Leonard Bacon, D.D., Rev. Increase N. Tarbox, D.D., 
Prof. W. C. Fowler, D.l)., Rev. I. P. Langworthy, D.D., 
" Fatlier" Gleason, the veteran missionary of. Brooklyn, N. Y., 
Rev. George Leon Walker, D.D., Rev. J. H. Twichell, 
Rev. Francis Williams, Rev. George I. Wood, Rev. William 
A. Hallock, Rev. J. H. Goodell, Rev. George A. Bowman,, 
Rev. Geo. E. Street of Exeter, N. H., Rev. J. B. Gregg, Rev. 
G. W. Winch ; also. Revs. W. H. Moore, Charles A. Bullard, 
George A. Sanborne, S. Hine, S, H. Allen, and Lucius Curtis 



of Hartford, and Eev. Lyman Warner, Rev. Edwin H. Smith, 
Rev. R, H. Tuttle of Windsor, Rev. J. G. Baird of New 
Haven ; also, Wm. F. Holcombe, M.D., of New York, P. W. 
Ellsworth, M.D., of Hartford, Mr. Charles M. Wolcott of 
Fishkill-on-the-Hudson, Mr. William L. Gaylord of Chicopee, 
Mass., Mr. F. A. Drake of Guilford, and Rev. Birdsey G. 
Northrop, Secretary of State Board of Education ; besides 
representatives from all the neighbor Churches, and many 
ladies and gentlemen from abroad whose names are not 
given. 

SERVICES OF THE DAY. 

The services opened at 10 o'clock a.m., with a prayer of 
invocation by Rev. S. D. Jewett, and a Hymn from Songs of 
Sanctuary, No. 248 : 

" O God, our help in ages past, 
Our hope for years to come, 
Our shelter from the stormy blast. 
And our eternal home," etc., 

when the Pastor of the Church made a brief address of wel- 
come, substantially as follows : 

In the name of this old Church I most heartily welcome 
these her children and friends to the old homestead to-day. 
You have come to join with us in celebrating our two hundred 
and fiftieth l^irthday. But we do not feel so aged yet as that 
we should say, ' She that is about to die saluteth thee.' It is 
rather in the hope that we may live the longer and the better 
by commemorating God's mercies to us in the past that we 
have invited you to come and rejoice with us as we now set 
up our Ebenezer, from which we desire to take a new de- 
parture in our work towards the bringing in of the full mil- 
lennium of the Church of God. And we hope this family 
reunion will prove so pleasant and profitable to you as well as 
to us, that we shall all mark it as one of our red-letter days. 

Rev. Mr. Leete then read the Scriptures, from Psa. 107 and 
Rev. 1st and 2d chapters. The old Bible in use in the time 
of Rev. Mr. Rowland was used on this occasion. Mr. Leete 
then led in prayer, after which was sung the 1019th Hymn : 

" Oh where are kings and empires now ? " etc. 



Papers were then read by Dea. J. H. Hayden, and hj Dea. 
J. ?). Woo(lf(>rd, which will ho given later. 

The 840th Hymn was sung to Coronation between these 
papers, and the Doxology at the close, after which Rev. Mr. 
Jewett pronounced the benediction. 

After dinner the audience re-assembled and services were 
resumed at 2 o'clock. 

The choir sang 

" Jerusalem, my glorious home." 

" Father " Gleason led in prayer. 

The Pastor, Rev. G. 0. Wilson, then read the following 
paper on the 

HISTORY OF THE CHURCH FROM THE FIRST. 

It would be impossible to give anything like a complete 
history of this ancient Church in the time allotted to this 
paper. It has had a continuous existence for two and a half 
centuries. Its history is therefore intimately connected not 
only with the history of the town, l)ut with tliat of New 
England from its earliest settlement. But time and the 
occasion will forbid any digression from the straight line of 
facts which are necessary to indicate the course of tlie Church 
itself from its organization to the present time ; I shall only 
attempt therefore to state in the briefest manner possible 
what is known about its formation in England, and its re- 
moval first to Massachusetts Bay and then to Connecticut, 
with a mere outline of its subsequent career. 

Its liistory as may l)e gathered from wliat has been already 
intimated is in some sense unique. Its migrations alone 
would make it such, if in no other way it differed from others 
of the early Churches of New England, for it has been like 
a groat Apostle, '' in journey ings often " — if not " in labors 
more abundant." 

I need not recite the familiar facts wliich antedate and 
exi»lain the exodus of the Puritans. To the steadily rising 
tide of reformation in England, the ruling powers in Church 
and State had opposed many ol)stacles until at length by 



their '^ Act of Uniformity " they said to the reform, " Thus 
far shalt thou go and no farther." And this edict they at- 
tempted to enforce hj aid of the Star Chamber, with fine 
and imprisonment. It was a bitter struggle, with the King- 
dom of England on the one hand and the Kingdom of God 
on the other. But the stronger of course prevailed. Eng- 
lishmen who had at last the word of God in their own tongue, 
and in their own hands also, with, something of the spirit of 
it in their hearts, were bold to say to their rulers as Peter 
and John said to theirs, " Whether it be right in the sight 
of God to harken unto you more than unto God judge 
ye." But acting upon their oum judgment, they had fully 
determined they would not conform to aiiy regulations 
of the Church which seemed to them in conflict with 
the spirit and letter of the New Testament. Early in the 
seventeenth century a considerable party was formed, not of 
non-conformists simply, who were set upon reforming the 
the Church from within, but of separatists who had cut 
themselves loose entirely from the national Church, and 
formed Churches of their own which acknowledged no head 
but Christ. In a manuscript sermon which I have by me, 
preached in England in 1629, in the 4th year of Charles I, 
— the preacher being himself a non-conformist no doubt, and I 
think without much doubt, our Mr. Warham — it is said, "Our 
former sovereign succeeded a blessed Deborah, who in the 
purity of doctrine and orderly discipline established true 
religion amongst us, but were we content with this ? Many 
were not. For were it in me to have observed, as it is well 
known, I could tell you of many schismatics that at the be- 
ginning of our late king's reign, of a turbulent spirit, carried 
headlong with precipitate zeal, formed a strong party for 
innovation, — not of doctrine yet of discipline, to the great 
disturbance of the peace of the Church. This could not but 
be displeasing to God." But these schismatics and innovators 
whom they so strongly disliked were destined to be the 
Joseph to go before their brethren into Egypt and to bring 
their brethren at length, not to the same land alone, but to 
the same opinions also. For the success of the separatists 
2 



10 

who had fled first to Holland, and afterwards to America, 
where they formed a colony at Plymouth, furnished the Puri- 
tans of England a solution to tlie hard problem which they 
had set before them, and they applied at once to Charles I for 
a Charter to settle Massachusetts Bay, which was granted in 
1628, and a company formed somewhat like the East India 
company, with powers of self-government. Says Green, in 
his History of the English People, " By the Puritans at 
large this grant was at once regarded as a providential call, 
and ^ conclusions ' for the settlement of a great colony on the 
other side of the Atlantic were circulated among the gentry 
and traders, and descriptions of the new country of Mass- 
achusetts were' talked over in every Puritan household." 

In 1629 three ships were sent over with between three and 
four Imndred persons, who set down at a place wiiich they 
called Salem, for they hoped to find there a home of peace, 
where persecution would no longer harass them. In the 
Spring of the following year it was decided to remove the 
Government of the colony to America, and a compact was 
signed by great numbers in different parts of England who 
engaged to remove thither, and a large fleet was collected 
for their transportation. " These," says Green, " were not 
like the early colonists of the South, broken men, adven- 
turers, bankrupts, criminals, or simply poor men and artizans 
like the Pilgrim Fathers of the Mayflower, They were in 
great part men of the professional and middle classes, some 
of them of large estate." Indeed, they desired "only the 
best as sharers of their enterprize, — men driven forth from 
their fatherland not by earthly want, nor by the greed of gold, 
nor by love of adventure, but Ijy the fear of God and the zeal 
for a godly worship." Of this fleet of seventeen shi})s 
which in 1630 l)rought over Gov. Winthrop with his deputy 
and assistants, together with about fifteen hundred souls, the 
first to sail was the " Mary and John " of four hundred tons, 
with one hundred and forty passengers from the southwest 
part of England. These gathered at Plymouth early in 
March. The company had been carefully made up with all 
the elements needed for an independent colony. Two mem- 



11 

bers of the government were with them, Messrs. Ludlow 
and Rossiter. They had also a military man of some ex- 
perience, Capt. John Mason, besides two clergymen under 
whose ministry many of them had set in the land which 
they were about to leave. While they tarried at Plymouth, 
making ready for departure, it was thought best to gather 
the Church and set over it these ministers as pastor and 
teacher. The reason for this step is not positively known, 
but it has been suggested, and with some probability at least, 
that it may have been through fear of the influence of the 
Separatists in America. 

The first company, after landing at Salem, had fraternized 
with the Plymouth men when they came to meet them and 
understand their views ; and when a Church was to be organ- 
ized at Salem, Gov. Endicott received messengers from the 
Church at Plymouth, who gave them the right hand of fel- 
lowship. This Church, though it still professed " not to 
separate from the Church of England, but only from its cor- 
ruptions," may have seemed to their brethren at home a little 
too cordial towards the schismatics : and since their next 
ship, the Mary and John, was likely to arrive somewhat in 
advance of the Arbella, in which Gov. Winthrop was to sail, 
it is not improbable that Rev. John White and others of the 
company advised the organization of the Church in England 
to forestall the evil influences of Plymouth. The only de- 
tailed account which we have of the organization of the 
Church is that given by Roger Clap, then a young man al)out 
twenty-one years of age. He had joined the company from 
admiration of Mr. Warham as a preacher, having heard him in 
Exeter, England. And in an account of his life, written when 
an old man for the benefit of his children, he says, after describ- 
ing the company gathered at Plymoutli, '' These godly 
people resolved to live together, and therefore as they had 
made choice of those two Reverend Servants of God, Mr. 
John Warham and Mr. John Maverick, to be their ministers, 
so they kept a day of solemn fasting in the New Hospital, 
. . . spending it in preaching and praying, where the worthy 
man of God, Mr. John White of Dorchester, in Dorset, was 



12 

present and preached unto us the fore part of the day, and 
in the latter part of the day, as the people did solemnly make 
choice of and call those godly ministers to be their officers, 
so also the Rev. Mr. Warham and Mr. Maverick did accept 
thereof and expressed the same." Beyond this, Mr. Clap 
tells us nothing, and perhaps we should expect nothing further 
from one who was present as a youth, and not a member of 
the Church. But Prince, the learned pastor of the Old 
South Church, Boston, in his Annals of New England, writ- 
ten only a hundred years after, says, on the authority of a 
manuscript letter then in his possession, that Messrs. War- 
ham and Maverick were then re-ordained as their ministers ; 
and in a note then added, says : '•'• These had also been or- 
dained ministers by Bishops in the Chui'ch of England, and 
they are now only separated to the especial care of this 
people." Just so they ordained Mr. John Wilson, pastor of 
the Church in Charlestown. A few months later making 
this minute : " We used imposition of hands, but with the 
protestation by all that it was only as a sign of election and 
confirmation, and not of any inteut that Mr. Wilson should 
renounce his ministry which he received in England." Thus 
far in every respect the proceedings at the formation of this 
Church in Plymouth, England, was followed by the churches 
formed under the same supervision, and but a few months 
later, both in Cliarlestown and also in Watertown, where Mr. 
Phillips was set over a part of the company that arrived with 
Gov. Winthrop only a few weeks after the Mary and John. 
But as no mention is made of any covenant which was sub- 
scribed to by this Church at the first, it has been doubted by 
some if they had any ; Mr. Clap's silence proves nothing. 
He was then but a young man and not himself a member. 
But these people had come together comparative strangers 
from different towns and counties, and were entering into 
Church relations with intent to live together in Christian fel- 
lowship ; and though they may not have attached the same 
significance to a covenant then as later, the probability is 
that they had one, if not at the very first, yet shortly after, 
when other churches of their company and under the same 



13 

government were so organized. It would be only a simple 
form of agreement, however, similar to that signed at Charles- 
town on the 30th of July hj Gov. Winthrop and Rev. John 
Wilson and two others, and by more than fifty in all before 
August, when the Church was fully organized. That cove- 
nant read thus : " In the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, 
and in obedience to his holy, wise, and divine ordinances, 
we, whose names are here underwritten being by his most 
wise and good providence brought together into this part of 
America, in the Bay of Massachusetts, and desirous to unite 
into one Congregation or Church under the Lord Jesus Christ 
our Head, in such sort as becometh all those whom he hath 
redeemed and sanctified to himself, do hereby solemnly and 
religiously, as in his most holy presence, promise and bind 
ourselves to walk in all our ways according to the rule of the 
Gospel, and in all sincere conformity to his holy ordinances, 
and in mutual love and respect to each other, so near as God 
shall give us grace." A somewhat similar covenant was 
signed at Watertown by about forty men besides women. In 
these two places together there must have been more than a 
thousand people at this time, and most of them baptized 
persons no doubt, yet only about a hundred entered into cov- 
enant with the churches at first, and the same thing was 
probably true of the Dorchester company when they organized 
a few months earlier. Roger Clap himself was not a mem- 
ber at first, though no douljt a baptized person as all the 
children of the church were in those days. And he describes 
his father as " a man fearing God and in good estate among 
God's faithful servants." If this moral and religiously in- 
clined young man though Imptized was not accounted a mem- 
ber of the church, there must have been something to dis- 
tinguish its members from others. It could not be mere con- 
firmation by a Bishop. The Puritans had little to do with 
Bishops in that country and none in this. Milton, writing 
of them in 1641, says, "• What numbers of faithful and free- 
born Englishmen and good Christians have been constrained 
to forsake their dearest home, their friends and kindred, 
whom nothino- but the wide ocean and the savage deserts of 



14 

America could hide and shelter from tlie fury of the Bishops." 
But once on this side the ocean they no longer recognized 
the authority of Archbishop Laud or any other Bishop of 
the National Church. And as souls were born again and 
received into church fellowship, it must have been done by 
the lirotherly recognition of the church after suitable exam- 
ination, and almost of necessity l)y assent to some form of 
covenant. Mr. Clap was probably the first one received to 
fellowship on this side the Atlantic. He says, " After God 
had brought me into this country, he was pleased to give me 
room in the hearts of his servants so that I was admitted 
into the church fellowship at our first V)eginning in Dorchester, 
in the year 1630."' Then he proceeds to say, " Jesus Christ 
being clearly preached, the way of coming to him by believing 
was plainly shown ; yet because many in their relations (^. e. 
accounts of experience) spake of their great terrors and 
deep sense of their lost condition, and I could not so find, 
as others did, the time when God wrought the work of con- 
version in my soul, nor in many respects the manner thereof, 
it caused in me . . . doubtings how it was with me, whether 
the work of grace were savingly wrought in my heart or no." 
And Mr. Clap shows still farther what kind of people were 
admitted to the church in those days when he says, " The 
Lord Jesus Christ was so plainly held out in the preaching of 
the Gospel unto poor lost sinners, and the absolute necessity 
of the new birth, and God's Holy Spirit in those days was 
pleased to accompany the word with such efficacy upon the 
hearts of many that our hearts were taken off from old 
England and set upon Heaven." "■ Many were converted 
.... and joined unto tlie several churches where they 
lived, confessing their faith publicly, and showing before all 
the assembly their experiences of the workings of God's 
Spirit in their hearts to bring them to Christ." And he adds, 
" Oh I the tears that have been shed in Dorchester meeting- 
house at such times both by those that have declared God's 
work in their souls and by those that heard them." Such 
accounts as these go to show that there was a church in 
Dorchester, as in Boston and Watertown, and tliat its mem- 



15 

bers were admitted upon evidence of conversion ; and some 
form of church covenant would seem indispensable. I dwell 
upon this point Ijecause it has been denied not only that we 
had a covenant previous to 164T, but that we were a church 
at all before that date. 

But before citing- further proof that we were a church, and 
so recognized by all other churches of the colony, it should 
be said that with such organization as we have described, the 
company set sail from Plymouth, England, just two hundred 
and fifty years ago to-day. For we celeljrate the day of their 
sailing, partly because it is the first exact date known. The 
organization occurred previous to their embarkation, but just 
how close upon it we cannot now tell. The first meeting- 
house of the church was therefore the cabin of the ship in 
which they crossed the Atlantic. Mr. Clap says, " We came 
by the good hand of the Lord through the deeps comfortably, 
having preaching and expounding of the word of God every 
day for ten weeks together by our ministers." This was a 
protracted meeting indeed, and no doubt a season of rich 
spiritual blessings. They landed on this side May 30th 
(0. S.), and set down at Mattapan, which they named Dor- 
chester. New England was then a complete wilderness. 
Two settlements only had been made by previous comers — 
one at Plymouth and the other at Salem. But what is now 
Boston was without an inhabitant, except a little company at 
Charlestown, who were making preparations to receive Gov. 
Winthrop on his arrival. But before the close of the year a 
goodly colony was established in that neighborhood, and there 
were in full operation three churches, at Dorchester and 
Watertown and Boston (for Wilson's Church at Charlestown 
was soon removed to Boston). The Government in August 
23, 1630, voted salaries to Mr. Wilson and Mr. Phillips, and 
ordered that all the inhabitants of the Colony be assessed for 
that purpose — '' Mattapan and Salem only excepted." By 
which it appears that the people of Dorchester, as well as 
Salem, were supporting their own ministers without the care 
of the Government. And it appears that these four churches 
were living on terms of mutual recognition, while all were 
in practical fellowship with Plymouth. 



16 

The ubiquitous Dr. Samuel Fuller, who was also deacon in 
the Plymouth Churcli, was on hand as soon as a new company- 
arrived, and besides "letting blood" in cases where it was 
needed after the long voyage, he labored as at Salem the year 
before to disabuse the minds of the brethren of their Puritan 
prejudices against separatists. In a letter to Gov. Bradford 
of Plymouth, dated June 28, 1630, he says : " I have been 
at Mattapan at the request of Mr. Warham, where I let 
blood of twenty persons. I had conference with them till I 
was weary. Mr. Warham holds that the visible church may 
consist of a mixed people, godly and openly ungodly, upon 
which point we had all our conference, to which I trust 
the Lord will give a blessing." Mr. Warham appears by 
this to have argued for that church theory which was then 
accepted in England, and indeed I think everywhere in all 
Protestant lands of that day. They had none of them settled 
upon a definite form of church government at that time. 
Says Cotton Mather : " The great Mr. Hildersham had advised 
our first planters to agree fully upon their form of church 
government before their coming into New England, but they 
had indeed agreed little farther than this general principle :, 
' that the reformation of the church was to be endeavored 
according to the written word of God.'" And Mr. Warham 
as well as Wilson and Phillips, and Higginson of Salem, was 
doubtless arguing this question in order to determine what 
the word of God taught concerning church membership. 
Hitherto the question of including the openly ungodly with 
the godly in church bonds could not have been a practical 
one, however, with him. His was called a "godly company," 
and surely none else would have banished themselves from 
their native land through simple love of a pure worship. But 
it is evident that God did add his blessing to Dea. Puller's 
discourse, for it is recorded in Bradford's History of Massa- 
chusetts that " Rev. Mr. Warham of the Church in Dorchester 
also expressed a desire to one of Plymouth Church in 1630 
to l)e on friendly terms with that church and people, and he 
declared himself satisfied with their ecclesiastical government 
and proceedings." 



17 

And so the church in Dorchester, like all their neighbor 
churches, came to fellowship the separatists as soon as they 
knew them. John Robinson had said to his flock years before 
this, " There will be no difference between the conformable 
ministers and you when they come to the practice of the 
ordinances out of the Kingdom" [of England]. And so it 
proved. Our own Dr. Bacon has sagely remarked that the 
Puritan when once in this country found himself " separated 
from the national church, not by schism, but by a thousand 
leagues of ocean." And this alone was sufficient to make 
them separatists. It is needless to say that for the first few 
years the people that came out from the National Church of 
England were not full-fledged Congregationalists ; for there 
was no Congregationalism then, or any other known polity 
outside the English Church and the Presbyterian Church of 
Scotland, except this Plymouth movement, which was then 
but in the gristle. It was not until a few years later, when 
Hooker and Shepherd and Mather came over with more 
positive ideas than their predecessors, that the church polity 
began to crystalize into what is now known as Congregation- 
alism. Nevertheless, there were churches, of which Dor- 
chester was one, and it was so recognized by all the other 
churches of the time, as it has been by all who have written 
the history of that time. Its members were made freemen 
under the law of the Colony that none but those who were 
members in recognized churches could be so admitted. Cot- 
ton Mather, writing of that period, says, " After Dorchester 
there followed another (church) at the town of Boston. To 
Boston soon succeeded a church at Roxbury ; to Roxbury, 
Lynn ; to Lynn one at Watertown ; so that in one or two years 
there were to be seen seven churches (Salem and Plymouth 
included) in this neighborhood, all of them attending to what 
the Spirit in the scripture said unto them ; all of them golden 
candlesticks, illustrated with a very sensible presence of the 
Lord Jesus Christ among them." 

This is testimony sufficient of itself to settle the early 
status of this Church beyond any reasonable doubt. Never- 
theless, a doubt and even a denial of the fact has been started 
3 



18 

of late by one whose authority on matters of actual history is 
worthy of the highest respect. And this is grounded upon the 
sermon* which Mr. Warham preached August 15, 1647, from 
1 Cor. i, 2: "Unto the Church of God which is at Corinth, 
to them that are sanctified in Christ Jesus, called to be 
saints.'" This sermon must have been preached after hearing 
Mr. Hooker's " Survey." The circumstances which led to 
the sermon were these : There had been among the churches 
of the colony a growing agreement as to the true idea and 
polity of a church of God, as taught in the scriptures, but as 
yet no formulating of it as a basis of Church unity. But in 
1646 a Synod or Council of the churches met in Boston for 
this purpose, and after a fortnight's session adjourned for a 
year : then, on account of a prevailing sickness, a new ad- 
journment was made to 1648, when the Cambridge Platform 
was adopted. But in the meanwhile all the leading men in 
both Colonies were discussing the subject. Hence this ser- 
mon, which lays down the fact as is stated in Hooker's Sur- 
vey, and afterwards in the Platform : that the Covenant is the 
real basis of church fellowship and discipline, and without a 
special church covenant, the covenant of grace entitles no 
man to church-membership. " A church becomes a church 
by reason of its covenant." But then in each of these docu- 
ments it is protested that there is an implicit covenant, if no 
explicit one, when a body of Christians unite together to 
worship God and enjoy the ordinances of the gospel. This 
is evidently inserted with chief reference to the Church of 
England, that they might not seem to deny to that body the 
right to be called a church because it had no written cove- 
nant. But the language is general ; and in Mr. Warham' s 
sermon the reference to the Church of England as thus 
organized stands alone, where we would surely expect some 
reference to his own church if that had been until then in 
the same category. But one of the chief uses of the sermon 
goes far toward explaining it. " It is," he says, " to persuade 
men not to be content with visible saintship, but labor to be 

*Hon. J. H. Trumbull kindly loaned me a copy of this sermon, which 
he hj^d made from Matthew Grant's Notes. 



19 

in covenant where they dwell." He suggests that a man may 
say he is " a member already by reason of his father's right in 
England." To which he replies : " He that is a member of the 
Church in England is a memljer of a particular church and 
not a member of the church congregational all the world 
over, though mystical." " He that is a member of one con- 
gregation," he adds, " is not a member of another congrega- 
tion." Probably here in Windsor there were, or had been, 
such men connected with the English Church, and therefore 
wishing to be accounted members of this church without 
entering into special covenant with it. The fact that a full 
and explicit Church Covenant was adopted by this Church only 
about three months later may be explained on the supposition 
that the covenant previously in use needed to be made more 
explicit after this emphasizing of the fact that it was the very 
basis of all church organization. Besides, the churches while 
in this embryotic state did often change the form of their 
covenants, — as at Salem in 1636. Weld, who was in Boston 
from 1632, wrote twelve years later, " Any Church hath and 
taketh liberty as they shall see just cause to alter their cove- 
nant and renew it before the Lord." And for this new Cov- 
enant of 1647 there was just cause in the circumstances, if 
not in the need of a more explicit Creed, which is here in- 
serted as a kind of preamble to the Covenant. 

The earliest covenants were brief and simple ; and as a 
rule no special church creed was adopted ; the New Testa- 
ment probably being simple and explicit enough, in their 
opinion, as a statement of doctrine in which they could pro- 
fess their faith. 

This sermon of Mr. Warham, and the adoption of a lengthy 
Creed and Covenant soon after, seem therefore instead of 
diminishing to increase the probability that the Church had a 
covenant previously. The fact of its standing, however, is 
sufficiently attested by such explicit statements as that of 
Cotton Mather, the grandson of Richard, of Dorchester, and 
by the mention of it as a church by Prince and all the learned 
writers of those early days, besides the unquestioned accept- 
ance of it as a church on a par with others of its time by 



20 

such accurate and studious writers as Drs. Clark and Felt, 
and others who have compiled the annals of that time. 

Next wc come to consider the fact of the removal of the 
church in a body to Connecticut. 

The continued persecution of the Puritans in England 
caused a rapid emigration to America, until, as Cotton Mather 
says, " The Massachusetts Colony was become like an hive 
over-stocked with bees." But information was received, 
through Indians at first, of the rich open lands along the 
Connecticut river, only a hundred miles farther on ; and the 
earlier settlers in Newtown, Watertown, and Dorchester be- 
came restless and sought consent of the Court as early as 
1634 to remove. At length, in May and June, 1635, consent 
was granted them on the supposition that it was not beyond 
the jurisdiction of that Colony. At once the removal com- 
menced of individuals from each of these towns, and begin- 
nings were made at Windsor, Hartford, and Wethersfield, 
which towns bore the names of those their people came from, 
for a year or more. 

But the question which most interests us to-day is. Did 
this Church come through the wilderness as it had crossed 
the seas without losing its organization ? This point has been 
thoroughly treated hj Dea. J. H. Hayden in articles repul> 
lished in the appendix to Stiles' History of Windsor. I need 
only re-state some of the facts there recorded. But first we 
must understand what sources of information are open to 
us. To illustrate the inaccuracy of writers from a hundred 
to a hundred and fifty years after the events of the removal, 
I will first quote Dr. Trumbull, who says, " The removal of 
the Dorchester people to Windsor is said to have been disa- 
greeable to their ministers, but as the whole Church and con- 
gregation removed it was necessary that they should go with 
them. However, Mr. Maverick died in March, before prepara- 
tions were made for his removal." This has a certain apoc- 
ryphal value, showing the tradition as it was received in 
Windsor at the time; for Dr. Trumbull is known to have 
come to this town and consulted its ancient men for his facts. 
But it is certain that the whole of the Dorchester congrega- 



21 

tion never came to Windsor ; for Dorchester was then the 
largest town in Massachusetts Colony, and it was ordered by 
the Court in March, 1635, that " persons who absent them- 
selves from church on the Lord's day be censured and fined 
or imprisoned." This must have given Mr. Warham a large 
though listless congregation, not one half of which ever came 
to Windsor. Then to cite another account but a little earlier 
and no less inaccurate, I quote from the Annals of Blake, the 
town clerk of Dorchester, left in manuscript until after his 
death. He says : " Mr. Warham and about half the Church 
removed to Windsor, and Mr. Mather and his people came 
and joined with Mr. Maverick and that half of the Church 
that were left ; and when those two companies of people 
were thus united they made one Church with the said Rev. 
Mr. John Maverick and Rev. Mr. Richard Mather for their 
pastors." To show the value of this, which was evidently the 
tradition in Dorchester, it is only necessary to state the facts 
concerning the formation of the second Church in Dorchester, 
as we shall presently do, and to mention that Mr. Maverick died 
in Boston, it is supposed, at the house of his son, February 3, 
1636, two months before any attempt was made to form the 
Church of which Mr. Richard Mather was pastor, and nearly 
seven months before it was formed. He was probably sick 
there from about the time of the first movement toward 
Windsor in the fall of 1635. Mr. Mather landed in Boston in 
August, 1635, and remained there, it is said, six months, 
where, with his wife, he united with the Church before going 
anywhere to exercise his gifts. A tradition that did not know 
such facts as these can be of no value whatever as history. 

There are three accounts only which are left us by men 
then living and thoroughly conversant with the events 
which they record. First, Gov. Winthrop, in his account of 
the Council at Dorchester, April 1st, for the formation of a 
new church, says : •"' A large part of the old Church had 
gone to Connecticut ; " and second, the author of the Life of 
Richard Mather, of whom Increase Mather, his son, says in 
the preface, " He hath had the reviewing of my father's man- 
uscripts, from whence, as well as from personal and intimate 



22 

acquaintance, he hath been truly furnished Avith the knowledge 
of what is here reported ; " writing, too, when all the older 
members of both churches were still living, says that Mr. 
Mather while in Boston received invitations from Plymouth, 
Dorchester, and Roxbury, " to employ the talent which the 
Lord had enriched him with for the work of the ministry 
among them." Being uncertain as to his duty he advised 
with friends, among whom Messrs. Cotton and Hooker were 
chief, and on their advice " set upon that great work," as the 
writer expresses it, •* of gathering a Church in Dorchester, the 
Church which was first planted in that place being removed 
with Rev. Mr. Warham to Connecticut."' Then, thirdly, we 
have the records of Matthew Grant, one of the first members 
of this Church, who, about 1667, sets down a list of- twent}^- 
four persons whom he describes as " members of the Church 
that were so in Dorchester, and came up here with Mr. War- 
ham and are still of us ;" after which he gives a list of those 
who. as he says, '' have been taken into full communion since 
we came here." Then again, under date of Dec. 31, 1677, 
he gives another list of fifteen names under the following 
heading : " Only yet living that came from Dorchester in full 
communion." This latter list was made out forty-two years, 
and the earlier perhaps about thirty-two, after the removal of 
the Church. The scribe says expressly that he does not 
mention any who have died or have gone from us to other 
places. And according to the lowest estimate it would seem 
probable tliat the numljer of those who came from Dorchester 
with Mr. Warham must have been five times that of the first 
list, or seven times that of the last. (That is, not those who 
came in his immediate company alone, but who in the course 
of a few years joined liim here, having been members of his 
Church previous to coming.) This would give us, as a mini- 
mum, more than one hundred persons. Though Gov. Winthrop 
doubtless spoke accurately in April, 1636, when he said the 
larger part of the Church had removed, others came later as 
we know, so that only a remnant of the original body could 
have been left behind. Neither Mattbew Grant, who was 
here as early as September, 1635, nor anybody else intimates 



23 

anything of a reorganization of the Church in Windsor ; but, 
on the contrary, Mr. Grant ahnost fully asserts the opposite 
fact. The original records, now lost, were doubtless brought 
here by Mr. Warham, for Mr. Grant says in the opening of 
his minutes, " The Elders of the Church have a record of 
Church proceedings in some things as they had;" and new 
church records were begTin in Dorchester with the formation 
of the new church, and are still preserved entire. Some few 
members of the old church as we know were left behind. Mr. 
Roger Clap was one. And of the seven members who formed 
the foundation or pillars of the new Church, three are known 
to have been in Dorchester a year or two before the removal ; 
whether members of the Church there we cannot tell. 

Other settlers had been coming into Dorchester from year 
to year, besides the " great numlier of godly people who came 
with Mr. Richard Mather." Yet when the council met in 
April, 1636, and they proceeded to examine the seven pillars 
who were selected no doubt with an eye to their supposed 
fitness for foundation stones, though they gave " good proof of 
their gifts," and made a satisfactory confession of their faith 
when they came to " manifest the work of God's grace in 
themselves," only Mr. Mather and one other were approved 
by the council. 

It had been ordered by the court but a month previous 
" that no Church be gathered without notifying the magis- 
trates, and the approval of the major part of the Churches 
in the commonwealth." Gov. Winthrop, who was there- 
fore in all probability present at this council, writes con- 
cerning the remainder of the proposed foundation : "They 
had builded their comfort of salvation upon unsound grounds, 
viz., some upon dreams and ravishes of spirit by fits, and 
others upon reformation of their lives." 

However, after an adjournment of the council, April 1st 
to August 23d, Mr. Mather's historian says : " A Church 
was constituted in Dorchester according to the order of the 
Gospel, with confession and profession of faith." 

The removal of the old Church to Connecticut cannot be 
said to have occurred before the spring of 1686, though a 



24 

large company came in the autumn of 1635, and returned in 
the winter, because of the detention of their goods and pro- 
visions which were to come by water. Others who liad come 
earlier and cstahlished themselves remained, however, and 
the company that had been driven l)ack in the winter, having 
disposed of their homes there, only tarried until they could 
return in safety. The winter had set in early, so that the 
Connecticut River was frozen over by the 15th of November 
(0. S.) , and probably the spring was equally early, for the 
report shows them gone from Dorchester on the 1st day of 
April. They returned largely re-enforced in numbers, while 
others still, as they could dispose of their property, followed 
them in the course of a year. 

The Church at Newtown had in similar manner determined 
to remove, and, though delayed for some reason until June, 
another church was formed in that place under the care of 
Rev. Mr. Shepherd, as early as the 1st of February preced- 
ing. The mere fact of the organization of a new Church in 
Dorchester would not be sufficient evidence of the removal of 
the old, had it not been expressly stated then that they had 
gone ; and if we had not other evidence from the journal 
kept by Gov, Winthrop, and from the doings of the court 
held in Hartford in April, and in Windsor in June, that 
they were then on the ground. Of these men, who came 
through the wilderness and settled this town, Dea. Roger 
Clap, the old historian of Dorchester, says : " Taken as a 
whole, and judged by their day and their light, they were the 
most distinguished persons that have ever lived in that town." 
Prominent among these were Roger Ludlow, who drafted the 
first constitution of Connecticut, adopted in 1639, and 
Capt, John Mason, who delivered the colony from fear of the 
terri))le Pequots ; both of whom were members of the Church. 
But for want of time particular mention can be made 
only of the early ministers who gave to the Church its strength 
and character. Mr. Maverick was older than Mr. Warham, 
and died at about sixty, just before the Church came to 
Connecticut. But Mr. Warham continued with the Church 
thirty-four years after its removal, and died an old man 



25 

in 1670. Cotton Mather says of him, " The whole colony of 
Connecticut considered him as a principal pillar and father 
of the Colony." He thinks also that Mr. Warham was the 
first who preached from notes in New England, for " which 
some faulted him," he says ; Yet, he adds, " when once they 
came to hear him they could not but admire the notable 
energy of his ministry. He was a more vigorous preacher 
than most of them who have been applauded for never look- 
ing in a book in their lives," by which he means probably 
looking in a sermon-book while preaching. Mr. Cotton 
remarks in this connection : " If a minister use his notes as 
a lawyer does his minutes, and carry a quiver full of them 
into the pulpit with him, from whence he may with one cast 
of his eye (after the lively shooting of one arrow,) fetch out 
the next it might be a thousand ways advantageous." . . . 

The only other thing noted of him by this author is stated 
thus, " Know then that though our Warham were as pious a 
man as most that are out of heaven, yet Satan often threw him 
into most deadly pangs of melancholy, that made him des- 
pair of ever getting thither." The " dreadful darkness," he 
says, " which overshadowed this child of light in his life, did 
not wholly leave him until his death, though some have 
asserted that the cloud was dispelled before he expired." The 
Covenant adopted by the Church in 1647 was probably of 
his framing, as seen by its agreement with the sermon preached 
on the subject a little before. It was drawn while the West- 
minster divines were yet in session, and the creed is attached 
as a sort of preamble. This very interesting document Hon. 
J. H. Trumbull deciphered and published in the Congrega- 
tional Quarterly for April, 1862. It is a covenant both of 
faith and of fellowship. There are six articles beginning 
with " We believe," and the seventh, containing the covenant, 
with " We bind ourselves," etc. 

Mr. Warham was the first of the four Elders appointed by 
the General Court to attend the Synod at Boston in June, 
1657, which, to meet certain difficulties and demands of the 
time, devised the half-way covenant system, a practical 
return to the idea of church membership which prevailed 
4 



26 

in England, and whicli had been advocated by Mr. Warhani 
in 1630. Althungh there was great opjiosition to this new- 
way on the i)art of the clmrches as a whole, Mr. Warham 
began at once to practice it in his Church, and continued it 
for seven years, when he announced to his people that he had 
met with such difficulties concerning that way that he could 
not conscientiously practice it until they were removed. And 
it was not returned to until his colleague and successor, Mr. 
Chauncey, set it on again three years later. It continued in 
use, however, in this Church as late as the time of the younger 
Rowland, and there are members of the Church now living 
who in infancy were baptised under that Covenant. The de- 
scendants of Mr. Warham are numerous, and many of them 
are filling honorable posts in the church.* One at least is 
now a member of the Church in Windsor. 

Mr. Hewet was settled as teacher in the Church in 1639, 
and the quaint epitaph on his tombstone in our old burying 
ground tells about all that need be said of him. Though but 
five years with the Church they declare his virtues thus : 

''Who wlien hee lived wee drew our vitall breath 
Who when hee dyed his dying was our death 
Who was ye stay of state, ye churches staff 
Alas the times forbids an epitaph." 

He was the last settled in this Church distinctively as teacher 
and not also pastor. I shall not name the several pastorates 
in their order ; their names, and their terms of service, are 
set before us in the panels around the gallery. 

Of Mr. Nathaniel Chauncey, who was Mr. Warham's suc- 
cessor, and for a few years his colleague, special mention must 



* Among the many noted persons who have descended from Rev. John 
Warham may be mentioned Rev. Jonathan Edwards, and son, Jonathan 
2d, Rev. Timothy Dwight, D.D., Judge John Trumbull, LL.D., Rev. R. 
S. Storrs, D.D., of Brooklyn, Stoddard the missionary, " Grace Green- 
wood," Gen. Wm. T. Sherman, Bishop Williams of the Episcopal Church, 
Mrs. Prof. Yardley of Berkeley Divinity School, and her sister, " Susan 
Coolidge,"Alsop the poet, Dr. Gardiner Spring, Elizabeth Stuart Phelps, 
and Rev. Dr. Todd of New Haven. His sister, wife of Rev. ]\Ir. Hill of 
Middletown, notes that the female descendants have many of them mar- 
ried distinguished men, as examples of which we may name Mrs. Horace 
Bushnell, Mrs. John Todd, D.D., JVIrs. Prof. Wm. S. Tyler. 



27 

be made, however, on account of the division in the Church 
which his settlement occasioned. He was fourth son of Rev. 
Cliarles Cliauncey, second President of Harvard College. He 
was highly recommended, by such men as Rev. John Wilson 
of Boston and Richard Mather of Dorchester, for his " learn- 
ing, studious diligence, hopeful piety, and grace, and peacea- 
ble demeanor." Nevertheless, for reasons not wholly known to 
us, there was great opposition to his settlement. The Gen- 
eral Court had to interfere, and, on the 14tli of October, 
1667, in obedience to its order, the people of Windsor voted 
on the question. And Mr. Henry Wolcott returned eighty- 
six votes for Mr. Chauncey and fifty-two against him. This 
seems to have secured his settlement, but the dissatisfied 
minority soon after obtained permission of the court to pro- 
cure for themselves an able ortliodox minister and have wor- 
ship by themselves, which they did later, under the ministry 
of Mr. Woodbridge. Though the decree of court says, " This 
Court leaves the Church at liberty for settling Mr. Chauncey 
and calling him to office, some have doubted if it was ever 
done, yet the probability is that he was regularly set over the 
Church as pastor. The explanation of this division is not 
fully known. Since the Synod of 1662, which endorsed and 
authorized the half-way Covenant system, proposed at first in 
1657, there seems to have been a great division in the 
churches.* One party here was called the Presbyterian party. 
Dr. Parker of Hartford, in his discourse at the two-hundredth 
anniversary of the South Church, says, " within a month from 
the time when the second Church in Hartford was formed, 
the party in the Church at Windsor that dissented from the 
strict Congregationalism of old Mr. Warham withdrew, 
and Mr. Woodbridge was ordained as minister of the Pres- 
byterian party of Windsor." It is known that the Presbyter- 
ians of England had exerted themselves to induce the Coun- 
cil at Boston, in 1648, to frame the platform of the New 
England churches in accordance with their ideas, — and doubt- 

* This was a time of disturbance in many of the churches throughout 
the colonies. Not only in Hartford, but in Boston, also, there was a 
secession of a portion of the old church, and a new one formed, which 
is now known as the Old South. 



28 

less many within the colony were then favorable to the polity 
of that Church which under Cromwell had Ijeen made for a time 
the established Church of England. But the disagreement was 
not all between these two factions of the church. There 
could not have been perfect peace in the main V)ody if it be 
true, as reported, that " When a sermon was preaclied in the 
pulpit in the forenoon concerning doctrines to which Mr. C. 
was opposed, he would in the afternoon preach to the same 
audience, from the same text, a regidar logical confutation of 
these doctrines." It was evidently a time of great trouble 
and disturbance in the Church, and it is not very strange 
that Mr. Chauncey remained only a little more than twelve 
years. He is the only pastor, however, in the first two cen- 
turies of the Church who did not remain and die among the 
people of liis charge. Another fact is worthy of mention 
here. For two years and twelve weeks, before February, 
1669, while matters were unsettled, and the minority of the 
Church, though worshiping apart, had not yet obtained leave 
to form a separate Church, and the General Court had the 
matter in hand with intent to heal the division, Matthew 
Grant records that the Church held no communion service. 
An interesting question concerning the mode of administering 
the communion is suggested by tlie account of Dea. More 
with the Church about this time. The charge for wine used 
at a single sacrament, August 14, 1670, is 18s., — and the 
average cost for the next six is about 14s., and the price 
per gallon is set down in one instance as 4s., which would 
allow about four gallons to one communion. But the mem- 
bership at that time according to the records could not have 
been more than sixty or seventy, — and this would have 
allowed a small glass of wine to each person. In the same 
way it can be shown that the bread eaten would have 
been sufficient to give to each person more that two ounces 
apiece. From this it would seem that they must have made 
more of a supper of this sacrament than we now do. 

Among the names of those added to the Church year by 
year we have this entry under date of " January 12, 1667. 
Mr. Nathaniel Chauncey made public declaration of his faith 
in Christian principles and the manner of God's workings in 



29 

his soul," — l^y which I infer that he then united with this 
Church, since he was not settled as pastor of the Church 
until some time after this date. But, since he must have 
been a member somewhere else previously, it would seem as 
if members were not then received by letter from one Church 
to another, but entered a Church only by profession of faitli.* 

The division in the Church at this time was great and 
grievous and was by no means healed when, in 1679, Mr. 
Chauncey left the church to accept an invitation to Hatfield, 
Mass. The Court and Councils tried in vain to restore 
harmony, until at last, worn out with wrangling, the town voted 
unanimously, in 1681, to call Mr. Saml. Mather, who was 
grandson to Richard Mather of Dorchester, and cousin to 
Cotton Mather. And at length, in 1684, he was settled and 
peace restored. Mr. Mather's ministry was a very fruitful 
one. It began with a revival, which brought into the Church 
28 the first year and 36 the second, more than doubling its 
numbers ; for there were but 54 members when he came. 

The records of this time, in his own handwriting, have such 
remarks as these at the close of the yearly entries : After 
the first year — "The Lord make the next year also a good 
year." And at the end of the fourth — "Not so much as one 
added to the Church, but as many died out of it as were 
added the year before. The Good Lord awaken and humble 
us." 

It was probably in the latter part of his ministry here that 
he preached the one discourse which has come down to us. 
It is from Jas. 2:20, and is entitled, "A Dead Faith Anato- 
mized — A discourse on the Nature and the Danger, with the 
deadly symptoms of a Dead Faith. . . In those who profess 
the faith of Christ." This was published at Boston in 1697, 
the preface being written by his cousin Cotton Mather, 
wherein he says: "This discourse is what was delivered to a 
popular audience. And such was the savour which it left on 

* Letters of recommendation were given by this Church as early as 1685, 
as appears from the following record in the old books of First Church, 
Hartford, under that date : " Daniel Clark upon letter of recommen- 
dation from the Christian Church in Windsor ou-ned the comnant^^ from 
which it appears also that the letter did not do away with the necessity 
of a covenanting with that church on admission. 



30 

the minds of its hearers where it was declared, as that the 
notes thereof are here come abroad." And of the autlior he 
says : " He is known throughout the Churches of the famous 
and happy colony (of Connecticut), to none of the least 
whereof he hath for many years been a faithful Pastor — 
known for his Piety, Gravity, and Usefulness, more than any 
recommendations of mine can render him." Then he remarks 
further, and it is a happy way of putting the compliment, 
" My relation to him will excuse me, as well as his modesty 
forbid me, for saying more." I may remark here that three 
hours would be a short time for the delivery of this sermon, 
though I believe it was the custom often to deliver so much 
of the sermon as contained the argument in the fore part of 
the day, and give the uses in the after part, that is, perform- 
ing the pai't of Teacher in one part of the day, and that of 
Pastor in the other. It was during his ministry that the 
first permanent division of the society was effected. At his 
settlement the parish included what is now Windsor, with 
Bloomfield, Windsor Locks, Suffield, East and South Windsor, 
and a portion of Ellington. The new meeting-house which 
was at once built, after the two parties united, stood out here 
on the green. And that was the one place of worship in all 
this region ; The Temple at Jerusalem whither the tribes went 
up. But the settlement on the east side of the river, then 
called Windsor Farms, had so increased that by 1694 they 
obtained leave of the court to sustain a minister among them, 
and Timothy Edwards, the father of Jonathan, came with his 
wife Nov. 14, 1694. Later a meeting-house was built, but as 
yet there was no Church and no territorial division of the 
town into separate parishes. Each man paid his rate where 
he chose. But in May, 1696, the Court record reads, " Upon 
motion of divers of the inhabitants of Windsor living on the 
east side of the river, this Court granted to said inhabitants 
free liberty in an orderly way, with the consent of neighbor 
Churches to involve themselves into Church estate, and to pro- 
ceed to the ordination of their minister, having first obtained 
the free consent of the Church of Windsor." But this would 
involve the division of the parish ; and that was a new thing. 
This was one of the earliest instances in the Colony when 



31 

one town was thus divided territorially into two parishes. 
And it is probable that " the free consent of the Church in 
Windsor " was not so easily obtained, for although a vote was 
passed in that society May 3, 1697, that Mr. Edwards should 
be called to office, as soon as conveniently may be, Mr. Stough- 
ton makes charge in his account book; May 28, 1698, for 
Provisions laid in the house of Mr. Edwards for his ordina- 
tion. The list includes rum and wine, with butter, cheese, 
eggs, and wheat-meal.* And so it seems that the real divis- 
ion of Church and Parish did not take place until the year 
1698, the same year that the Suffield Church was formed. 
Before this date many of the persons received to member- 
ship here by Mr. Mather are recorded as " of Suffield." Mr. 
Jonathan Marsh was ordained associate Pastor in 1709, yet 
Mr. Mather lived eighteen years longer and probably performed 
still some of the ministerial duties. 

Of Mr. Marsh's ministry we have no records, but the tradi- 
tion is that it was a fruitful one. And it is known that 
Windsor shared liberally in the great revival which attended 
the preaching of Rev. Geo. Whitefield, who, according to local 
tradition, preached here as well at Suffield and Enfield. 

During the ministry of Mr. Marsh the Church and Parish 
suffered further diminution by the separation of Poquonnock 
and establishment of an independent Church and Society 
in 1724, and a similar secession of Bloomfield in 1736. Each 
of those cleavages, as that of Windsor Locks in 1844, was 
natural and necessary, from the growth of population around 
new centers, but each was resisted as long as possible by the 
mother Church, as it is natural for any mother to delay as 
long as possible the separation of her family, and the depart- 
ure of her daughters to found new homes elsewhere. The 
chief event which made memorable the next ministry, that 
of Rev. Wm. Russell, was the struggle between the two 
extremes of the parish with regard to the location of the new 
meeting-house. As a result of the decision to build on the 
South side of the rivulet, the opposing party, by consent of 

* Some of these facts were kindly furnished by Mr. John A. Stoiighton, 
who has of h\te come into possession of a lot of Edwards manuscript. 



32 

the Court, separated themselves from the Church and built 
them a house about two miles north of the other, and for 
thirty-three years worshiped by themselves, with Rev. Tho. 
Hinsdale for their Pastor, This division, as also the earlier 
one in 1667, would doubtless have been permanent, as was 
that between the 1st and 2d Churches in Hartford, if the 
population of Windsor had increased as in Hartford, so as to 
warrant its continuance. In the midst of this period of divi- 
sion the war of the Revolution was fought. Until then we had 
owned as our Sovereigns the successive Kings of England, 
and lived under protection of the British flag. But this di- 
vision in the territory of England by which we became an 
independent government, has proved a more permanent one 
than the contemporaneous division in our old Church. For, 
shortly after the estalilishment of peace, a reunion was brought 
about and the body has ever since remained without open 
schism. The Pastorates of the two Rowlands, father and son, 
both of whom were men worthy of extended mention and 
praise had we time to devote to it, extended seven years beyond 
the close of the second century of our history. Up to this 
time the Church had had but seven Pastors, besides the two 
Teachers who labored with Mr. Warham. The average length 
of a pastorate up to this point had lieen about thirty-one years. 
In the last fifty years, less seven, there have been five 
pastors, making twelve in all for the 250 years, though by the 
overlapping of some pastorates it makes more than 250 years 
of service. One of these was for a single year, yet the 
average length of pastorate from the first is about twenty- 
one years. Of this apostolic twelve, it may be said at least 
that there has been no Judas among them. All who have 
completed their pastoral service have been earnest, faithful 
preachers of the Word, and some of them men of power 
and influence. None have made their names famous through 
their published works. None have received from the schools 
those honorary titles which are designed to indicate rare 
scholarly attainments, but all have, or will, we trust, secure 
the Lord's "Well done, good and faithful servant." The 
last three of the ex-pastors are still living, and two of them 



33 

with us to-day. Of the deacons of the Church nothing can 
be said but in praise. There are twenty-two whose names 
are in our manual. Eight at least of those who have gone 
to their reward will be remembered by some who are present 
here to-day. The last one who was removed from us by 
death was good Deacon Barber, who certainly had the quali- 
fication which Paul names when he says " It is required of a 
deacon that he be found blameless." The venerable and 
courteous Deacon Morgan we all remember also with tender 
regard. And Deacons Phelps and Rowland, and Gillet and 
Mills, and Sargeant, some of the older persons can recall, 
and we hope to listen to reminiscences of some of them this 
evening, as well as of other worthies of the past, of whom 
some of our older members or guests have many pleasant 
recollections. 

The Church as a body has not been a large or conspicuous 
one in the State, except at the first. But it has kept on the 
even tenor of its way, doing faithful work in its limited 
sphere. It has had a share in other revivals which have been 
general throughout the State, besides the one in 1740, when 
Whitefield preached. In the years of the revolutionary war, 
and for some time after, there seems to have been a great 
spiritual dearth here, as there were added to the church on 
profession of faith during the whole fourteen years of the 
elder Rowland's ministry, from 1776 to 1790, only five per- 
sons — all women. Mr. Hinsdale's Church, to the north, seems 
to have been more prosperous. Its additions, at least, were 
more numerous. But in 1799, after the reunion, there was a 
large ingathering, as also in 1821. Both which revivals were 
somewhat general. At Hartford, at least, many were added 
to the Churches both in 1800 and in 1821. The First Church, 
Hartford, received 147 to membership in 1821. Again, in 
1831, and later in 1838 and 1841, and 1858, as also in 1876, 
there were seasons of refreshing, and large additions, we will 
trust, of such as shall be saved. Some of the men who have 
been enrolled as members in this Church have filled honored 
and influential positions in the Government. It is enough 
just to mention such names as Ellsworth, and Wolcott, and 
5 



34 

Newberry. But when the honored of God shall be known in 
His kingdom, we trust that it may be said of very many 
whose names shall shine for ever, This and that man were born 
there. 

I will not waste your time with apologies for this meagre 
and imperfect sketch of the past career of the old Churcli. 
It has been a delight to me to study its early records, and in 
imagination live among the noble and devoted men who 
founded it, and bore such witness to their love for the truth, 
and for purity and freedom of Christian worship, by the sac- 
rifices they were willing to make in its behalf. And as they 
were wont to watch so reverently and believingly for indica- 
tions of God's personal presence and providence in the 
various events through which they passed, I have felt to apply 
to this Church the motto of our State, Qui transtulit siistinet. 
For I have seemed to see continued proof of his Fatherly care 
and guiding hand throughout all the way by which it has come, 
until now it has completed one full quarter of a thousand 
years of living and of labor, lighting up with its testimony 
to the truth its own little corner of this great dark world 
besides sending out streams of influence through its continu- 
ous gifts of money and men, to help enlighten large spaces 
beyond its own boundary. For at least nineteen ministers 
have been raised up here, many of whom have gone out to do 
faithful work, besides many good and efficient ministers' 
wives, one of whom we have lately sent forth with our prayers 
to the great dark empire on the other side of the globe, which 
is celestial only in name, but which we trust soon to see 
filled with celestial light. And so the good Lord has blessed 
and honored us by accepting our services in the doing of His 
work, and assisting to accomplish his purposes of grace. 

The noble old river, on whose banks we dwell, has kept on 
through flood and drought, steadily pouring its waters into 
the sea, ever since our fathers emerged from the eastern 
forest and beheld with delight its broad and open meadows. 
Its channel has been changed somewhat, as well as broadened 
by the wear and wash of its banks ; and, not unlike it, this old 
Church has been all the time changing its membership as the 



36 

generations have followed one another to the great sea toward 
which we are all hurrying. It has had its droughts and floods 
also, and perhaps we may say that its channel too has broad- 
ened somewhat — we dare not say that it has deepened. But 
He who twice transplanted it still sustains, and will, we 
trust, continue to sustain it. But the methods of His work- 
ing are the same from age to age, and we can only hope that 
He who wrought so mightily in our fathers will inspire us 
and those who come after us to emulate them in their love 
for his truth and their readiness to sacrifice all things to pre- 
serve its purity and to practice and publish it. Then when the 
five hundredth anniversary of the Church is celebrated, 
though we will have been so long with our fathers that most 
of our names will be forgotten, and our times will seem as 
remote and strange as theirs seems to us to-day — yet will the 
old Church still continue green and flourishing, and, may we 
not hope, ere that the true millennium will have dawned 
fully upon our earth. 

In the middle of this paper the choir was called upon to 
sing Mrs. Hemans' old hymn, 

" The breaking waves dashed high, 
On a stern and rock-bound coast," 

And at its close was sung Dr. H. Bonar's hymn, 

" Far down the ages now, 

Much of her journey done, 
The pilgrim Church pursues her way. 

Until her crown be won. 

The story of her past, 

Comes up before her view. 
How well it seems to suit her now, 

Old, and yet ever new. 

It is the same old tale 

Of sin and weariness, 
Of grace and love yet flowing down, 

To pardon and to bless. 

No wider is the gate, 

No broader is the way ; 
No smoother is the ancient path 

That leads to life and day. 



36 

Still faithful to our God, 

And to our Captain true, 
We follow where He leads the way, 

The kingdom in our view. 

The Pastor then introduced Rev. Dr. Bacon by saying : 
Just fifty-six years and six months ago yesterday, the Con- 
sociation met here in this house with Rev. Mr. Henry A. 
Rowland, and a young man came in before them to be ex- 
amined, and, if they thought proper, there ordained to the 
gospel ministry. Here he was ordained and he is with us 
to-day — not an old man yet, as you will see when I introduce 
to you Dr. Leonard Bacon. 

Dr. Bacon then made one of his characteristic addresses, 
substantially as follows : * 

DR. BACON'S ADDRESS. 

When the hay has been gathered, and the well-loaded cart 
is moving from the meadow, there follows in its track, as you 
know, a boy, or perhaps an old man with a rake. Such is 
my duty on this occasion, namely, to rake after the cart. 
I have been invited to remark on the paper which has just 
been read in our hearing, or to follow it with a statement of 
any additional facts. 

Having heard the paper only this once, and having had 
beforehand no definite knowledge of what your pastor would 
tell us, I may be excused from offering any commentary other 
than that "Well done" which is already in the thoughts of 
every hearer. But, trying to gather up a few straws in the 
track of the discourse, I may begin by saying that my atten- 
tion, as I listened, was particularly drawn to what was said 
about the original "Covenant" of this Church, and about the 
question whether, at its beginning, it had any covenant. 

Let me say, then, that it was simply impossible for a Church 
to be constituted there in Plymouth Hospital, on the day 
which we commemorate, by any other method than a free 
agreement of its members to perform toward each other, and 

* The address was extemporaneous, but, by request, the speaker has 
written out this report of it from memory. 



37 

toward the body which they were constituting, all the duties 
of membership in a Christian Church. Whether that agree- 
ment was in one form of words or another, whether it was 
subscribed with pen and ink or only assented to by some 
significant gesture, whether it was written, to be kept on 
perishable paper, or oral, to be recorded only in God's book of 
remembrance, are questions of little moment. It is enough 
that they agreed and consented to be a church of Christ. 
That agreement and consent of theirs was a mutual engage- 
ment in the presence of God, that they would render to each 
other and to Him the duties of the sacred relation into which 
they were entering. That mutual agreement was a Covenant ; 
and no Church Covenant can be, legitimately, either more or 
less than such an agreement. 

A Church Covenant is like a marriage covenant. A cove- 
nant between competent parties is the essential thing in a 
wedding. The marriage is made, a family is instituted, the 
relation of husband and wife is established, when the parties, 
in the presence of God and of competent human witnesses, 
covenant with each other and with the commonwealth that 
they will be, not at some future time, as in a promise of 
marriage, but from that hour till death shall part them, a 
wedded pair, husband and wife. Whether the Covenant be 
expressed in a certain printed or written form of words, or 
in words that are only spoken, whether the parties express 
their assent and consent by vocal utterance, or silently 
by some sufficient symbol, as of a ring, or of clasped hands, 
will not affect the reality of the contract or the sacred 
validity of the relation. Every Congregational minister who 
officiates at weddings has his own form, and a different form 
perhaps on different occasions, but in every instance the par- 
ties make a Covenant with each other before God ; and in 
every instance the Covenant, whatever the form of it, is the 
same. The Covenant, whatever the solemnities that sur- 
round it, is simply a mutual engagement to be, the one a lov- 
ing and true husband, the other a loving and true wife. 
Anything less makes the contract an abomination. Anything 
more is superfluous, and may be mischievous. 



38 

I remember that one day, when I was a boy, I was looking 
on wliile an elderly gentleman was splitting wood in his back 
yard ; and seeing his next-door nciglibor pass by, who was 
not addicted to such amusements, he hailed him with the 
question, " Was there a clause about oven-wood in your mar- 
riage contract ? " " No," was the answer. Allow me to say 
that whether that particular item of a husband's duty was 
mentioned or not, in the administration of the Covenant at 
that gentleman's wedding, made no difference with his duty 
as a husband. When he undertook to be a husband, he took 
upon himself every duty involved in that relation ; and it is 
as much the husband's duty to provide good flour and good 
oven-wood as it is the wife's duty to make good bread. So 
of a Church Covenant. The member who " sticks in the 
letter " of the formula, and argues that this or that particular 
of duty is not "nominated in the bond," deludes himself. 
Let him rather remember that he has taken upon himself a 
sacred Covenant to perform all Christian duty as a brother 
among brethren in a Christian Church, nothing more, nothing- 
less. Just that was the Covenant which the first members of 
this Church made with each other at that meeting in Plymouth 
Hospital two hundred and fifty years ago. 

The moderator of that meeting was a beneficed clergyman 
in the Established Church of England, John White. He was 
at that time fifty-five years of age, and had been for five and 
twenty years rector of Trinity parish in Dorchester. He 
was honored for his godliness and for his leadership in relig- 
ious affairs ; and it was in kindly remembrance of him that 
the first members of this Church gave the name Dorchester 
to the place of their settlement in Massachusetts, and after- 
ward for a time to this place. That John White, whom his 
friends in all Dorsetshire loved to speak of as " Patriarch 
White," has been fitly called " the father of Massachusetts 
Colony, " for the measures which resulted in the founding of 
that Puritan commonwealth were begun by him and were 
carried forward by his persistent faith and courage. The 
rector of Trinity parish in Dorchester was a Puritan and a 
leader of the Puritans. Perhaps somebody here is ready to 



39 

exclaim, How could that be ? I answer, he was a conform- 
ing Puritan, and his dislike of certain vestments and cere- 
monies had not let him into any eccentricity for which he 
could be silenced or deprived of his living. As a Puritan he 
held that separation from the National Church was the sin of 
schism ; but he was not therefore an Episcopalian. Conform- 
ing or non-conforming, the Puritans held fast the principle of 
a National Church; and therefore, while they demanded a 
further return toward primitive purity, they were obedient, 
so far as each man's conscience would permit, to all existing 
regulations. Recognizing the National Church as the one 
Church of Christ in England, they regarded themselves as 
true and loyal members of that Church, and not the less 
loyal for desiring improvements, and some of them great 
improvements, in its government and in its forms of worship. 
Men unable to distinguish — as the Puritan party could and 
did distinguish — between the Church of England and the 
then existing hierarchy and liturgy in that Church, have 
argued that because Winthrop and his associates, before sail- 
ing from Yarmouth for the Massachusetts Bay, sent back a 
loving farewell to their bretliren of the Church of England, 
they must have been Episcopalians. Whereas the simple 
and notorious fact is that their dislike of Episcopalianism in 
the Church of England, hardly less than their dislike of the 
absolutism in the State of England, was an impelling motive 
of their migration. Why then, you may ask, did they insist 
on being members of the National Church ? Why did they 
not withdraw and become a Church or a " denomination" by 
themselves? Just for two reasons: They believed that to 
separate from the National Church, while they remained in 
England, would be a sin ; and they knew that Separatists were 
liable to be hanged. Therefore they determined to separate 
(as they said) "from the corruptions of the Church" by 
going out of the realm. So soon as a propitious wind should 
bear tliem out upon the ocean, so soon as they should be no 
longer floating in English waters, they would be beyond the 
jurisdiction of Bishop Laud. They were sailing forth to 
plant the Church of Christ beyond the ocean. When they 



40 

touched tliese shores and began to invade the continental 
wilderness, they saw by faith a new and better England ; and 
the Church which they brought with them was simply the 
Church of Christ without the distinctive regulations by which 
it was manacled and fettered in old England. They trusted 
that the Church wliich they were planting would be purer 
than that which they had left behind them, and would do 
better work for Christ and for humanity than the Church of 
their native land with its unfinished reformation had done or 
could do. Fearing what seemed to them the sin of schism, 
they did not secede ; but they put three thousand miles of 
ocean between their worshiping assemblies and the corrup- 
tions against which they protested. Instead of seceding, they 
succeeded, and their success has become a momentous fact in 
the world's history. 

Look back to what the world was on the day which we are 
commemorating — that day of prayer in the Plymouth Hos- 
pital two hundred and fifty years ago. What changes be- 
tween that day and this ! In the time of Charles I. and his 
chief counselor Laud, it was a question, not only on the 
European continent, but in England, whether the Protestant 
Reformation should be abolished, and the religion of the dark 
ages re-established with its spiritual and intellectual despot- 
ism. Where is that question now? It has been tried on 
many a field of battle as well as in many an intellectual con- 
flict ; and the victory is not yet on the side of mediseval civili- 
zation or mediaeval religion. Think of the world as it is 
to-day. Where are we ? The place to which so many of us 
have come as on wings of fire from distant homes, that here 
with you we may reverently call up these dim and fading 
memories ; where was it and what was it two hundred and fifty 
years ago ? What was this continent then ? Where on the 
face of the earth had liberty so entrenched itself as to defy 
assault? How stupendous would the thought have been to 
tlie men who, just ready to set sail for the New England 
wilderness, were ordaining their pastor and teacher, could 
they have foreseen what we see and enjoy, this civil and re- 
ligous liberty, these institutions of religion and of learning, 



41 

this diffusion of knowledge, this flag with all that it signifies 
to us of history and of promise, and with all that it signifies 
to the nations as they see it floating in the winds of every 
sea, and shedding light from its constellation upon every 
shore ! How great would their amazement liave been could 
they have had a momentary vision of the railways that trav- 
erse our continent and hold our States together as with iron 
bands; a vision of the engine, which in the fields and 
the mines as well as in factories augments beyond all com- 
putation the productive power of human labor ; a vision of 
the steamships that plough our inland waters, or go forth 
upon the ocean without asking leave of wind or tide I Could 
they have been told of the contrast between their ten weeks' 
voyage in the Mary-and-John, and the ten-days voyage over 
the same ocean now, the tale would have been to them less 
credible than the wildest oriental fiction. Could they have 
had for one short hour a foresight of the things which we see, — 
the way opened for the gospel into every land, the gospel 
spreading among the nations and finding utterance in every 
language — converts to Christ multiplied in every region and 
of every race and kindred — they would have said. Behold the 
glory of the latter days ! 

Samuel Hopkins, the great theologian of New England at 
the close of the last century, appended to his System of 
Divinity a Treatise on the Millennium. To me that treatise 
is an interesting study. Its author was not eminently learned. 
He knew no Hebrew, and little Greek. But he knew the 
English Bible ; he had his share of common sense ; and he 
lived in communion with God. In his devout study of the 
prophetic Word, he saw a glorious future for the world; ages 
of peace and knowledge ; ages of light and blessedness under 
the reign of Christ. He foresaw that there would be great 
inventions to facilitate intercourse, to increase the productive- 
ness of labor, to fill the earth with riches, to give time and 
means for the improvement of men's minds and hearts. Of 
course he did not foretell what the inventions were to be, for 
could he have done so he would have been himself the in- 
ventor. But he foresaw a time when a few hours of daily 



42 

labor, perhaps even less than the eight-hour system tolerates, 
would bring to every man an adequate supply of things need- 
ful to the body ; and he could believe that under such condi- 
tions there would be a daily resort of joyful multitudes to 
hear good preaching. The good man perhaps was not aware 
that in the advance of Christian civilization there would be 
new wants, so that what were once the luxuries of the few, 
would become the necessaries of comfortable living for the 
many. We do not yet see the daily assembling of husband- 
men and artisans, after their morning work, to enjoy the 
privilege of united worship and of the daily sermon ; but as 
we study the Newport theologian's idea of the Millennium, 
and think of man's increased and ever increasing dominion 
over nature, do we not see something of that millennium 
already begun ? The world as it was in 1630, — Oh how unlike 
this world of ours in 1880 1 Nay, how great the difference 
between that world which some of us remember, and this 
world in which we are noAv living I I am sometimes sorry 
for young people that their conception of what God hath 
wrought in these last days is necessarily so inade(iuate. A 
morning newspaper, with information of what happened 
yesterday in the remotest regions of the "world, touches them 
with no electric thrill of wonder. The telegraph, flashing 
its messages over the continents and under the oceans, is 
nothing new to them. The photograph is not more wonder- 
ful to them than the sight of their own faces in a mirror. 
I am sorry for them; they cannot enjoy life as we do who 
are old. Men travel far to see the pyramids, the ruins of 
Grecian temples, the world-famous works of art in European 
galleries. A great railway is more stupendous than the 
pyramids. A rushing train of cars is a work more glorious 
than the collected glories of picture and sculpture in any royal 
palace. I am sorry for the young to whom such things — 
sublime poetry to us old men — are only common prose. They 
cannot dream as we do of what may be when the cycle of 
five hundred years from 1630 shall be complete. They can- 
not stand in such awe and adoration as ours before the 
thought of what the world will be, and what the kingdom of 



43 

Christ on earth will be in the year of our Lord two thousand 
one hundred and thirty. 

The men whom we commemorate were serious men. Their 
thought was that life is a serious thing — not amusement but 
duty; not play but work. Let us be in that respect like 
them. Let us work while it is day, working for those who 
shall come after us, working for Christ, working as those who 
must give account to God. So shall the world in years and 
ages to come be the Ijetter for our having lived in it. 

Rev. L N. Tarbox, D.D., was then introduced and read the 
following poem written for the occasion : 

OT.D WINDSOR, CONN. 

1630—1880. 
1. 
Roll back the curtains of the years, and let our eyes behold 
The distant times, the ancient Avays, the sturdy men of old ; 
Across the stormy deep they came, the forest wilds they trod. 
To find a home for Liberty, a temple for their God. 

2. 
They rested V>y the rocky shore, till shone the western star. 
To point them to a fertile vale, a peaceful home afar ; 
They struggled through the pathless woods, till full before their sight 
Spread the fair valley broad and green, bathed in its vernal light. 

?>. 
They saw the river flowing by, fed from its ancient rills, 
Bearing its wealth of waters down from the far northern hills : 
In silence and in solitude for ages had it flowed, 
To make these lowlands beautiful, most meet for man's abode. 

4. 
And now they heard the voice of God, as Israel heard of old, 
Saying : Be strong and fear ye not, let all your hearts be bold ; 
This swelling .Jordan ye shall pass beneath my guiding hand. 
And here your weary feet shall rest, within this goodly land. 

5. 

The Lord thy God he giveth thee this laud of brooks and rills, 
Of fountains and of depths that spring from valleys and from hills: 
A land of barley and of wheat, of corn and wine and oil ; 
In plenty shalt thou eat thy bread, upon this fruitful soil. 



44 

G. 
When thou liast eaten and art full, then shalt thou bow the knee, 
And bless the Lord for this good land He giveth unto thee : 
Let not thine heart be lifted up in boastful pride, to saj', 
Mine own right hand hath gotten me tlie wealth I share to-day. 

7. 
Thou shalt remember all the way the Lord thy God has led, 
To point thy pathway through the sea, through deserts wild and dread ; 
If thou forsake the Lord thy God, His favor He will hide, 
And thou, like nations gone before, shalt perish in thy pride. 

8. 
What brought these way-worn wanderers, these weary households here. 
So far from home and kindred ties and all they held most dear? 
What nerved their hearts to cross the sea and tread this forest path 
To brave tlie hungry beasts of prey, the savage in his wrath ? 

0. 
A tyrant king had risen up to rule with iron rod: 
A haughty priest had strode between their consciences and God : 
To haughty priest or tyrant king they would not bend the knee ; 
Come exile, chains, or prison walls, their souls should still be free. 

10. 
Such was the cup of bitterness our fathers had to drink, 
Such was the penal doom prepared for men who dared to think ; 
So was the good seed sifted out by God's mysterious baud, 
To plant this empire of the west, this joy of many a land. 

IL 
And now behold these exiles here, John Warham and his flock, 
Made up of good old English names, and good old English stock ; 
They come with hearts that trust in God, and hands made strong for 

toil. 
To build their rude and humble homes, and break the waiting soil. 

12. 
They clustered on this rising ground, where now their ashes rest, 
They saw the valley's outmost bounds, the blue hills east and west ; 
The little I'iver at their feet in quiet murmured by. 
And the great river, broad and deep, lay full before their eye. 

13. 
The dusky children of the woods were glancing to and fro. 
With faces like the mystic sphinx, whose meaning none might know ; 
They thronged about these river lands, tliey wandered by the streams. 
They rambled through the forest paths and dreamed their forest dreams, 



45 

14. 
They sowed these broad and fertile fields with arrow-heads and spears, 
A liarvest for the farmer-boys to crop in after years ; 
The plow-share still shall turn them up, while centuries roll apace. 
Or sifting winds on sandy knolls make bare their hiding-place. 

15. 
And not their arrow-heads alone, — their ancient names are found 
Still clinging to the modern soil in all the region round ; 
Podunk and old Poquonnoc, Scantic and Scitico, 
Recall to us that dusky race that vanished long ago. 

16. 
But who shall paint those earliest years and bring their dark to light. 
The heavy burdens of the day, the watches of the night :' 
Those nights when mothers dared not close their weary eyes to rest, 
But clasped their babes with every noise more closely to their breast. 

17. 
The first foundations were not laid wiien war's wild notes were lieard. 
And dire alarm and tragic fear through every household stirred ; 
And well the stoutest heart might quail, the boldest hold their bicath, 
A bloody challenge had been given, — its issue, life or death. 

18. 
But soon the black cloud rolled away, the bright sun shone again. 
When crowned with victory homeward came John Mason and his men. 
That bloody Pequot race was gone, — had perished past recall. 
The infant towns kept jubilee, in gladness at its fall. 

19. 
Their Indian neighbors too were glad, and danced with forest mirth. 
For now their hateful, cruel foe was blotted from the earth. 
The good news ran along the shore to Plymouth and the Bay, 
And all New England joined to keep a glad Thanksgiving Day. 

20. 
In modern " piping times of peace," around our genial fires. 
Their puny sons may criticise and harshly judge their sires ; 
But that wild tribe had sowed the wind along its bloody path, 
And now had reaped the whirlwind in all its direful Avratli. 

31. 
The years passed on. The little one became a thousand strong, 
The small one stretched its growing length the river sides along. 
The gloomy shadows disappeared before the woodman's blows, 
The wilderness began to bloom and blossom as the rose. 



46 

33. 

They sowed and reaped, they Ijought and sold, they wedded and 

were wed, 
The gray-liaired fathers passed away, and children rose instead ; 
The catechism taught them all about the Moral Plan, 
And every little child could tell the chiefest end of man. 

3:5. 

Their toils were rough, their gains were small, but still with courage 

stout. 
They ta.xed themselves in every war to help old England out. 
They fought the Indians and the Frencli on many a stubborn field, 
They fougjit the Saybrook Platform too, and made the clergy yield. 

34. 
And when Sir Andros came in state, to take their charter back, 
The lights went out, the charter too, and none could tell its track. 
When Andros left for Boston town, defeated in his plan, 
'Tis safe to say, he rode away a madder, wiser man. 

35. 
They tired the Primer at him then — they taught the boys to say 
Those rliymes about the Royal Oak in quite another way: 
His Royal Majesty was dropt, and by a rendering free, 
The Charter Oah it was that saved the People\s Liberty. 

36. 
Then came the news that James had gone, — last of the Stuart Kings; 
Tlie joyful tale flew o'er the land, as on an eagle's wings: 
The modest charter ventured out from its dark hiding-place, 
.\nd for a hundred A^ears shed down its mild, benignant grace. 

37. 
Beneath its just and peaceful sway the people dwelt secure; 
Tiieir Governors were righteous men, their magistrates were pure: 
They did not look across the sea to wait the royal nod. 
They chose for office whom they ^Aoiild, their chartered rights were 
broad. 

38. 
And so the strange thing came to pass, in seventeen seventy-five. 
That Brother Jonathan* was found head of the patriot hive; 
In all the thirteen colonies, no Governor but he 
Was ranged upon the people's side, a friend of liberty. 



* At the breaking out of the revolutionary war, in 1775, Jonathan Trum- 
bull of Lebanon was Colonial Governor of Connecticut, having been in 
office since 17(59, and continuing till 1783. By the Charter of Connecticut, 
obtained by the younger John Winthrop in 1G63 from Charles II, England 



47 

29. 

The women of tlie olden times were busy as tlie men. 
For liome-made clotlies and household cares were all in order then : 
The maidens spun the fleecy wool, the mothers spun the flax, 
What time the men folks were abroad and busy witli the axe. 

30. 
The big wheel and the little wheel kept up their buzzing sound. 
Till all the yearly stock was sjiun, and all the yarn was wound. 
And then the ijounding loom began, beneath each rustic roof. 
With fl3'ing shuttle to and fro, to join the warp and woof 

81. 
And many a Windsor lad at Yale, some Ellsworth, Rockwell, Stiles, 
A Wolcott or an Edwards boy, begirt with ladies' smiles, 
Has mounted up to speak his piece upon Commencement Day, 
Proud in his brand-new suit of clothes, made in this simple way. 

32. 

The ruddy maidens of tliose years, had they been bought and sold, 
If judged by any modern rate, were worth their weight in gold; 
No foreign Bridgets can be hired to do as much as they. 
Wlio did it all for kindred love and iai a fllial way. 

33. 

Wliat tliough their hands were hard with toil, with household work 

and care, 
No worthier damsels could be found man"s destinies to share; 
For they could fill whatever j^iace unto their lot might fall. 
And give to life a dignity in cottage or in hall. 

34. 

Great was the old Town-meeting day, and high was the debate, 
Touching the questions which arose on Town, or Church, or State. 
To build a bridge, or meeting-house, the voters were the same, 
Only the latter clause came up under the parish name. 

35. 
And great was old Election Day, and great was 'lection cake. 
No nourishment for growing boys a prouder rank could take. 
Greatest of all. Thanksgiving Day ; that glad day of the year. 
When roaring fires and chicken-pie filled every house with cheer. 



lield no veto on the action of the people in their choice of Governor. In 
tlie other Colonies the Governor? were of foreign appointment, and of 
course were with the King. But Gov. Trumbull was with the people, and 
Washington when in doubt, used to remark, " We must see what Brother 
Jonathan will say." Hence the term "Brother Jonathan." 



48 

36. 

A\'liat bard sliall sing, in titting strains, the olden district school'^ 

The benches small and l)enches big, the masters wooden rule, 

The meaning glances round the room, which passed and made no 

noise, 
Tlie nascent loves that grew and died among the girls and boys : 

37. 
The tiijelling-school on winter nights, — the clatter and the din 
Which raged before the hour had come for spelling to begin: 
The hard words flying to and fro to knock the dunces down, 
The bright-eyed girl or bright-eyed boy that waited for the crown : 

88. 
The phiin old-fashioned meeting-house, with square and pen-like pews, 
Where winter cold was kept condensed, all prime for Sunday use : 
The ty thing-man that sat in state on some high gallery perch. 
Who rattled round and made more noise than all the jjoys in cliurch : 

39. 
The minister who stood aloft in pulpit quaint and tall. 
Above his head a sounding-board, which seemed al)out to fall : 
The chorister, who gave the pitch and led the waiting choir. 
Beating the time with outspread arms to lend the needful fire : 

40. 
The singing-school to teach tlie youth tlie mysteries of song, 
When young men saw the maidens home and made the journey long : 
The sleigh-ride on a moonlight night, the passage out and back, 
When jingling bells on frosty air gave note to clear the track. 

41. 
But time would fail us to pursue this airy, trilling strain. 
And so, in parting, let us take our solder song again : 
For though life everywhere puts on its lilayful, sportive side. 
In earnest thoughts and earnest deeds our lathers lived and died. 

42. 
Let us upraise that olden song, — the ancient psalm, once more. 
Which first our fathers sang when they had reached New England's 

shore. 
Let us with voice and heart unite before our fatliers' God, 
Tiiat He would give us strength to tread tlie ways the fathers trod. 



49 

43. 
Thou, Lord, hast been our dwelling-place ere mountain tops were 

reared, 
Before the rolling earth was shaped, our ancient hills appeared, 
Through countless generations past tliy goings were abroad. 
From everlasting thou art known, the ever living-God. 

44. 
Thou turnest man again to dust, frail child of earth and clay, 
While in thy sight a thousand years are counted but a day; 
To Thee tlie ages come and go, in never ending flight, 
As yesterday when it is past, or as a watch by night. 

45. 
Our days are three-score years and ten, or, if Thou givest strength. 
So that they reach to four-score years, how Aveary is their length ? 
For heavy burdens clog their path, and sorrows cloud their way. 
And soon, how soon, the day is done, wc haste and fly away. 

46. 
So teach us. Lord, to count our days, daily to grow more wise, 
And let thy glorious work appear before our children's eyes, 
Th« beauty of the Lord our God, upon us may it rest, 
That all the labor of our hands may be conflrmed and blest. 

Prof. William Chauncey Fowler, D.D., of Durham, was 
introduced as a descendant of President Charles Chauncey, 
whose son Nathanael was second pastor of this Church. He 
spoke briefly of the place which the Bible held in the hearts 
of the Puritans, and how often they read it through in order, 
and closed with a eulogium on the women of Connecticut as 
wives and cooks, and remarked that we had enjoyed splendid 
proofs of this in our entertainment here to-day. 

Following Prof. Fowler, William Frederick Holcomb, M.D., 
being called upon, exhibited an old Geneva Bible which was 
brought to Windsor by Jonathan Gillet, Sen., one of the 
original members, and had been in the hands of the family ever 
since. He said it was called a " Breeches Bible," because the - 
garment made of fig-leaves in the Garden which in King James' 
is translated "apron" is here given "breeches," and in the 
family it was known as the Bear Bible, because it was once 
placed under a window in the old days to keep up the sash, 
when a bear clawed it, leaving the marks of his claws so 
7 



50 

deep upon the edges of the leaves that they are very plainly seen 
still. Dr. Holcombe afterward suggested that a bear came 
to examine the family records and not being able to write his 
name, left his "mark." 

The exercises of the afternoon closed with the singing of 
a part of the 90th Psalm, from the old Sternhold & Hopkins 
edition, as our fathers sung a century and a half ago. The 
deacon lined it off, and all the people sung two lines at a 
time to the tune of old Dundee, which is more ancient than 
the Church. This Psalm is said to be the first they sung 
upon these shores ; and the old Psalm Book from which it 
was read was one tliat had come down from that time, bound 
together with a Hebrew Bible. 

The paper read in the morning by Deacon J. H. Hayden 
of Windsor Locks, was upon the old meeting-houses. He 
said: 



DEACON J. H. HAYDEN'S ADDRESS. 

The Puritans held that an organized body of Christians 
constituted a church, but they never designated their place 
of worship by the same name. When the first settlers of 
New England were able to erect public buildings for their 
religious and secular meetings they called them Meeting- 
houses. These houses were built by the town, and were con- 
trolled by the town. They were not the exclusive property, 
as now, of the church and congregation worshiping in them. 
Here the church and congregation worshiped on the Sabbath 
and on lecture-days, — on all other days, as occasion required, 
the town in its corporate capacity met here for the transac- 
tion of public business. 

Here the town voted on ecclesiastical affairs, raised taxes 
for the support of the ministry, for the public schools, and 
for town expenses; here they voted for civil and military 
officers, for the care of the " burying-yard," and for the 
disposal of the public land belonging to the town, and liere 
they discussed measures for the public defence in times of 
Indian disturbances. The meeting-house was the accepted 
center of the town. 



51 

The people had paid tithes in England for the support of 
the Church, and no country, Protestant or Catholic, at that 
time ventured to leave the support of religious institutions to 
voluntary contributions, and it should not seem strange that 
our fathers associated the civil government with the ecclesi- 
astical, in the support of their churches. 

Their dissent from the Church of England had led them to 
look upon the brotherhood of the church as equals, entitled 
to an equal voice and vote on all matters pertaining to their 
organization, and applying the same principle, it was fitting 
that those who paid the same tax, for the support of religious 
institutions, should also have an equal vote, and out of the 
logic of this reasoning grew the republican form of our civil 
government. It wrought some evil to the church, but it was 
of inestimable value to the State in that formative period of 
our present republic. 

The rising generation can hardly realize how recently all 
this union of Church and State has passed away. Since my 
own recollection these walls have echoed to the efforts of 
town-meeting orators. I have seen men stand here to air their 
eloquence on all questions proper to come before a town 
meeting.* 

I am set to speak of the Meeting-houses in which this 
Church has worshiped. Passing over the new hospital in 
Plymouth, England, where they were organized, and passing 
over that seventy days' meeting on board the good ship Mary 
and John, an account of which falls within the province of 
another to speak, we will begin with this Church and people 
after their arrival at Dorchester, Massachusetts. We have 
no record of their first meetings, but one of their number in 
speaking of the Boston church, which was organized that 
summer says, "their Meeting-place was abroad, under a tree, 
where I heard Mr. Wilson and Mr. Phillips preach many a 



* After the church at Windsor Locks had built a house of worship in 
1847, an old man who had long neglected public worship, but who had 
lost none of his zest for town-meeting debate, gravely rose and moved 
that the town meetings in future should be held one-third of the time at 
Windsor Locks; when questioned about accommodations, he answered 
with some surprise, "Why, ain't we got a meeting-house there? " 



J 



52 

good sermon," and we doubt not this church had a similar 
meeting- place at first. On their arrival, not a family had a 
house in w^aiting for them. The trees of the forest, which 
cumbered the ground and shut out the sunlight, were to be 
felled and shaped, and built into houses before their wives 
and little ones could be provided with shelter, and none could 
be spared to build a meeting-house until this work was done ; 
consequently, when this church met for worship, they had no 
choice left but the forest shade, or the open sky. 

If the poet had this Church in his mind's eye he could 
hardly have given a more graphic picture of the contrast in 
its outward surroundings that first summer, and to-day. 

I " The groves were God's first temples. Ere man learned 
To hew the shaft, and lay the architrave, 
And spread the roof above them, — ere he framed 
The lofty vault, to gather and roll hack 
The sound of anthems; in the darkling wood, 
I Amid the cool and silence, he knelt down 

And oftered to the Mightiest, solemn thanks, 
And supplications." 

No forest shade or memorial stone now marks the spot 
where this Church first offered up her prayers and praises 
" on the wild New England shore." But there is a forest 
which remains, almost unchanged, when a church, gathered 
largely from the descendants of the original members of this 
Church, " met abroad under a tree." A company of people 
who lived in Dorchester and its vicinity, who thought to 
escape the rigors of a New England climate, and still enjoy 
New England institutions, met in 1696 and organized a Con- 
gregational church, chose a pastor and installed him, and as 
this church had done sixty-six years before, left their homes 
and sailed away. They reached their destination in due 
time, and settled down eighteen miles from the present city 
of Charleston. Nearly forty years ago I stood under the 
tree where that church held its first communion service — 
the first ever administered in the Carolinas. It was in 
the midst of a forest, hoar and gray; beneath it stood 
their little square meeting-house with its peaked roof, — 



53 

built soon after their arrival. No public highway ran before 
it, there was no dwelling-house in sight, the early graves of 
those who fell victims to the climate were scattered around — 
while overhead the branches were draped with sombre moss, 
and silence brooded over the scene. 

The first record evidence we have that a meeting-house had 
been built in Dorchester we find in Winthrop's journal under 
date of March 19, 1631-2, he says: 

" Mr. Maverick, one of the ministers of Dorchester, in dry- 
ing a little powder (which took fire by the heat of the fire, 
pan), fired a small barrel of two or three pounds, yet it did 
no other harm but singed his clothes. It was in the new 
meeting-house which was thatched, and the thatch was only 
blackened a little." This was but a year and nine months 
after their arrival — how much before this it was built we know 
not. When this Church and people came up to Windsor, 
they were obliged to begin anew the work already accom- 
plished at Dorchester, but doubtless their five-years' experi- 
ence there had qualified them to meet the task before them 
more intelligently. Their first step was to send on pioneers, 
who came early in the summer of 1635, to select a place, 
and provide shelters for their families who were left l)ehind 
at Dorchester and came on in October. These first houses 
were only intended to serve their occupants until they 
could build more substantial and convenient ones. They 
were of one style of architecture, standing along the brow 
of the meadow-hill, extending from the little river to the 
Chief Justice Ellsworth place. Beginning a few feet below 
the brow of the hill they excavated a space the size of 
the proposed house, throwing up the earth at the sides 
and west end — on the embankment thus made, they laid a 
plate on which they rested the foot of the rafters. Instead 
of shingle, the roof was thatched with a coarse wild grass. 
The east end was probably made from plank, hewn or sawn 
by hand; the floors and ceiling were probably made from 
clove boards — boards cloven or split from short logs and 



54 

hewn into shape. Only the east end and the roof appeared 
above ground.* 

It will be recollected that this people erected a meeting- 
house within two years of their arrival at Dorchester. But 
the first notice we have that a meeting-house is being ])uilt 
here is more than four years after they reached Windsor.f 
But we should remember that in the interval the Pequot war 
had made it necessary to erect a palisade, remove their fami- 
lies into it, provide shelters there, and remove back again 

*When stone were convenient, a wall was laid under the plates which 
received the foot of the rafters, but as no stone were at hand, here they 
must have dispensed with them. The company sent hy Sir Robert Salton- 
stall to provide near the little river for coming emigrants, arrived after the 
Dorchester men that summer of 1635, and, the Dorchester men claim- 
ing that land, the Saltonstall men provided winter-quarters for themselves 
at or near the Chief Justice Ellsworth place. 

In 1636 we find settlers on the south side of the river, and so far as we 
know their houses were situated on the brow of a hill, like those on Sandy 
Bank. Several houses were built along the brow of the first rise from 
the meadow, where the road now runs at and south of the David Rowland 
place, which " houses were drowned very deep " in the flood of 1639. The 
first houses on the east side of the present Broad street were at first built 
on the brow of the hill on the west side of the railroad. When H. S. 
Hayden built his barn a few years since he dug up some of the remains of 
one of those houses. The Loomis place, on the Island, still shows the place 
where the first house was built. Houses in several other localities in Wind- 
sor were built on the brow^ of the hill. Matthew Grant, in an account of 
the Pequot war and the building of the Palisade 1637 says, "Our inhabit- 
ants on Sandy Bank gathered themselves nearer together from their 
remote dwellings to provide for their safety, set upon fortifying with 
Palisade," etc. 

The brow of the meadow hill not being known to later generations by 
the name of " Sandy Bank," led to the conclusion that Sandy Hill was 
meant, which lies about a mile to the west. I was told by an old person 
forty years ago, that at first there were more people settled at Sandy Hill 
than on Main street, while in fact not a person settled there. 

f The following from the Colonial Records is all the record evidence 
we find relating to the time of the building of the first meeting-house. 
We think it was several years before it was fully completed : 

" Feb., 1639-40. Mr. Hull moved the Court in behalf of Thomas Ford 
of Windsor, that in regard the workmen are much taken up and employed 
in making a bridge and a meeting-house with them, and his work hindered 
of impaling in the ground which was granted him by the Court for a hog 
park, that there may be granted to him a year longer time for fencing it 
in," etc. 



55 

after the war was ended, so their work had been much hin 
dered. 

In modern times the first settlers in forests often build 
log cabins, and even log meeting-houses. A recent letter 
from Missouri says that the first meeting-house in Hartford 
was a log house ; but this is a mistake. The first settlers here 
did not build log houses ; and it will help us to appreciate the 
great labor of building a framed meeting-house, to remember 
there was not a saw-mill in town, probably not in the Col- 
ony, when this first house was built, and I find no mention 
of a saw-mill for more than forty years after. Every plank 
and every board was sawed by hand, if sawed at all. The 
nails were made one by one, on a blacksmith's anvil. Unfor- 
tunately the record of town votes and town accounts, the first 
fifteen years, have crumbled to dust, and we have no record 
of the meeting-house during this period, except this simple 
reference to it on the Colony records. Probably the records 
once told its cost, and perhaps its dimensions ; but we have 
built a theory from such facts as we gather under later dates, 
and feel confident that we know nearly its dimensions, how it 
was covered, how it was seated, who sat in the wall slips, who 
sat in the body of the house, and who sat in tlie Great Pew. 

Under date of 1658 (eighteen years after the house was 
built), we find among the recorded acts of the Townsmen, 
now called Selectmen, the following item : " The Townsmen 
desired Lieut. Newbury to get such sills * for the meeting- 
house as are wanted and bring them to the water-side." In 
the town accounts, 1659-60, is a credit to Mr. Newbury, " For 
the remainder of the work to the silling and underpinning of 
the meeting-house, <£10 9s. 6(^." They evidently dispensed 
with underpinning at first, and probably built the house with- 

* Sills were not always used as a support for the floor, but in early times 
the floor was often on a level with the bottom of the sills, making a step 
down from the door sill into the room. An example of this style of 
house was the Gaylord House of Windsor Locks, built about 1711, and 
pulled down about 1820. The sills projected into the rooms, as the corner 
posts and " summer beams" did, the sills forming a low, narrow seat, very 
convenient for children. Mrs. Albert Denslow, of Windsor Locks, still 
remembers this house, and the seat along the side of the room in which 
she and her little friends played. 



56 

out sills, resting the posts on some temporary foundation. 
It seems improbable that sills eould have decayed within 
eighteen years. 

January 7, 16G0-1, " The Townsmen met and agreed that 
the meeting-house should be shingled, all the gutters on 
both sides of the lanthorn, and not alter the form of the 
roof." A few weeks after we have the following entry : 
" The Townsmen made a bargain with Samuel Grant to 
shingle the inside roof [west side] of the meeting-house, from 
end to end, on both sides of the lanthorn, with 18-inch 
shingle. He is to get the shingle in the woods, and cut them 
and hew them, and lay them on one inch and a quarter thick, 
generally, and seven inches in breadth, one with another, and 
he is to liave 4s. per 100 for all plain work, and for the gutters, 
because of the more difficulty of laying these, he is to have 
what he shall in equity judge to be worth more than 4s. per 
100 ; and for the time, he is to do the north side of the lan- 
thorn before midsummer next, and the other side by October 
following." Like the Dorchester meeting-house, this one was 
at first thatched. The contractor was given from February 
to October to shingle one side, and this twenty-six years after 
the house was built. We are not surprised that they did not 
shingle it at first. 

But what of the lantern spoken of on the roof ? It has 
been referred to before. In 1658, " it was determined that 
provision should be made upon the top of the meeting-house, 
from the lanthorn to the ridge of the house, to walk con- 
veniently, to sound a trumpet or drum to give warning to 
meetings." This lantern was an architectural ornament, a 
little dome set on the ridge, in the middle of the house. They 
had no bell for it, but built a platform out from it on the ridge 
of the house, for the convenience of the man who "• beat the 
drum to give warnings to meetings on the Lord's Day, twice 
in the morning, seasonably, and once after dinner." I think 
you still follow their example, — " giving warnings to meetings 
on the Lord's Day, twice in the morning, seasonably, and once 
after dinner." You have simply substituted a bell for their 
drum or trumpet. 



57 

Farther extracts from the town records are as follows : 

1667. " The Townsmen agreed with Benjamin Griswold 
to get some good timl)er fallen and cloven into bolts, and 
brought home by the latter end of the week following, for the 
use of the meeting-house, and Samuel Clrant is to cleave them 
when brought home, and tit them, and nail them about the 
meeting-house. Benjamin was to have for his timber, when 
fetched and brought home in l)olts, one length with another, 
Ss. 6d. per 100 as they would rise in number when cloven by 
Samuel Grant." 

1668. " Also, George Griswold is to get somebody to clal) 
up the walls of the meeting-lujuse that are broken. 

1669. Among the town expenses are these : 

" To John Grant, for carting bolts from Pipe-stave Swamp* 
for the meeting-house, 76-. 6c?." 

" To John Owen, for the clab]»ing he did the meeting-house 
before winter, 7s. 4c?." 

These items for repairs, made twenty-five to thirty years 
after the meeting-house was built, show us that the outside 
was at first covered with clapljoards, or, as they were at first 
called, cloveboards, because they were cloven or split. They 
were to be brought from the woods in " bolts," — logs of suit- 
able length for splitting; then "cleave them" and "fit 
them," — split and hew them, — and " nail them about the meet- 
ing-house," and so " clab up the walls that are broken." This 
must have made a somewhat rough exterior, which could not 
have been marred by whittling. Possibly the innocent indul- 
gence of this propensity on the clapboards, early crept into 
the boys' gallery, and remained there through half a dozen 
generations. 

1668. "Deacon Moore is to speak with John Gibbard to 
get him to come and mend the glass of the meeting-house 
windows." 

The next year " Wm. Buel came and brought two new 
casements for the corner windows of the meeting-house." I 



* Pipe-stave Swamp, near the southwest comer of the town, as now 
bounded. * 



.58 

have as yet been unable to learn the number or style of the 
windows. 

We have now given you a rough outside view of the first 
meeting-house. It stood about the middle of Palisado Green, 
(as it then was,) in front of the Crcneral Pierson place. It had 
a thatched roof with a cupola on the ridge. The sides were 
covered with clapboards split from the log. Let us now go 
inside. 

I find this item in the town accounts in 1661. 

1661. "For lath and nails for meeting-house, £5." The 
house had not all l)een plastered before, and probably none 
of it. 

1665. " For other work done, as carting of timber out of 
the woods to the pit, and from the pit to the meeting-house." 
Now the pit was a saw-pit, such as I think is still used in ship 
yards for some special work. A pit was dug, timbers laid 
across it to support the log when rolled over the pit. One 
man stood below, the other on top of the log, the two per- 
forming in a small way the work of a modern saw-mill. We 
readily see that it required long and patient toil to produce 
one thousand feet of boards.* 

Let us premise that the churches in which they had wor- 
shiped in England had no seats for the common people, or at 
most, but simple benches. The gentry, at their own expense, 
put in pews for themselves. So here, the town built the meet- 
ing-house, and laid a tax on the grand list to pay for it, but 
laid a poll-tax, a given sum on each householder, or man and 
his wife, to meet the expense of putting in the seats. But 
let first learn where they were to get the lumber to make pews 
and slips. The cloven boards would not answer this purpose ; 
they must have sawn lumlter, — something they could plane 
both for ceiling and for seats. 

* In the inventory of Rev. Mr. Huit's estate, 1644, we find this item : 
Two thousand planks at Elias Parkman's, and 500 feet at the falls, 
£8 10s. " Elias Parkinan's " was in the northwest corner of the palisado, 
where tliere certainly was no water-power for a saw -mill, and the 500 feet 
at the falls were probably sawn there because of some excellence in tin; 
timber which grew there. In a memorandum of his property Mr. lluit 
says, "A rafte of Plank is going down, I think will be £40." 



69 



Our first item relative to the provision for seats in the 
house liears date 1652, twelve years after that first notice 
that a meeting-house was being built. " Accounts made with 
Wm. Buell for work done on the meeting-house. The Elder's 
Pew, Deacon's Pew, Magistrate's Pew, and their wives' Pew, 
formerly paid, and for the four rows of seats in the house, 
when the doors are up we find the work comes to £28 19.s'." 
At a later date, but referring to the same " four rows of 
seats," we have a note of explanation, showing how many 
seats there were, and who had neglected to pay the car- 
penter for his work. 

Jan. 18, 1650-60. "A note taken what dwelling-houses 
are in town, that the owners of them have paid for seats in 
the meeting-house, and how much and by whom; for those 
that have been placed in the two rows of long seats were first 
seated by five in a seat, and were to pay Wm. Buell 3s. a 
person, or 6s. for a man and wife; and that made up his pay 
when he had finished them with doors. Also those that 
were placed in the short seats, at the first were to pay 3s. a 
person, as they in the long seats ; but when it was agreed 
that those seats should be raised higher, for more convenient 
hearing, they were to pay Wm. Buell 6d. a person more ; so 
that for a man and his wife 7s." 

"9 long seats with six in a seat." 
"13 short seats with o in a seat." 

" First I set down those that have paid, and were placed in 
the long seats when they paid." * 



* Thos. Ford, 
Bray Rosseter, 
•John Porter, 
Stephen Terry, 
Henry Wolcott, 
John Bissell, 
Thomas Nowell, 
Thomas Thornton, 
Arthur Williams, 
.John Rockwell, 
John Hakes, 
John Stiles, Sen., 
Philip Randall. 



Josiah Hull, 
William Buell, 
Samuel Pond, 
Nathan Gillett, 
Thomas Parsons, 
Thomas Hoskins, 
Anthony Hawkins, 
Peter Tilton, 
Joshua Carter, 
Abraham Randall, 
Matthias .Johnson, 
Geo. Phillips, 
Geo. Phelps, 



Humphrey Pinney, 
John Moore, 
Roger Williams, 
Matthew Grant, 
Aaron Cook, 
David Wilton, 
Thomas Dewey, 
William Hubbard, 
Richard Vore, 
Thomas Bascom, 
Nicholas Palmer, 
William Thrall, 
Richard Oldage, 



60 



Then follows a list of fifty-five men, one more than the 
seating capacity; nearly all of these paid Gs. 

" Those that were placed in the short seats, what they have 
paid." * 

Then follow the names of thirty-nine men, just the seat- 
ing capacity; about half of these paid 7s., others smaller 
sums. These men take the whole seating capacity of one 
side, and I suppose their wives occupied corresponding seats 
on the other side, — the men and women sitting apart as they 
were known to have done three-fourths of a century later. 
Then 13 men are named, who sat in the Pews, and 3 aged 
widow women, Goodie Denslow, Goodie Gibbs, Goodie Hos- 
kins, and Dea. Gaylord's wife.f 

It will be remembered that the short seats were "raised 
higher for more convenient hearing." Let us suppose these 



Thomas BucklaBd, 
Thomas Gunn, 
Begat Egglestone, 
Thomas Holcomb, 
Robert Wiuchel, 
Walter Fyler, 
Jonathan Gillett, 

* William Haj^den, 
Daniel Clarke, 
Henry Newbury, 
Henry Stiles, 
William Gaylord, Jr., 
Simon Wolcott, 

by Thomas Orton, 
.John Hosford, 

by his mother, 
Geo. Crist. Wolcott. 
Rob. Wilson, 
Miles Mcrwin, 
Thomas Barljer, 
[Rolx'rtj Watson, 

Mr. Mlyn, 

Mr. T.,oomis, 

Mr. IJohn] Witchfield, 

Goode Denslow, 

Goode Gibbs, 

Goode Hoskins, 



Samuel Allen, 

Mr. (Francis) Stiles, 

John Drake, Sen. , 

Jeffrey Baker, 

John Rockwell, by liis 

mother, 
Eltwed Pomeroy, 

Thomas Dib])lc, 
Samuel Phelps, 
Nath. Phelps, 
Richard Birge, 
Henry Curtis, 
R. Taylor, 
Edward Griswold, 
•John Drake, 
Job Drake, 
Joseph Tjoomis, 
William Philips, 
Stephen Taylor. 
Samuel Gaylord, 
Benedick Alvord, 

f " In the Pews." 
Deacon Gaylord's wife 
Mr. AUyn, 
Mr. Phelps, 
Mr. Clark, 
C. (Jook, 
Mr. Wolcott. 



John Young, 
Owen Tudor, 
Simon Hoyt. 



Jacob Drake, 
Robert Hay ward, 
Simon Mills, 
James Eno, 
William Filley, 
Mic. Johnson, 
Thomas Gilbert, 
Richard Weller, 
William Hannum, 
Alexander Alvord, 
John Osborn, 
George Alexander, 
Anthonj' Dorchester. 



Mr. Terry, 
.John Hissell, 
Mr. Clark. 
Mr. Mason, 
Mr. Stoughton, 



61 

short seats are the wall slips a little raised, as your wall slips 
are now. We learn elsewhere that the magistrate's pew 
was "raised equal with the short seats." Let us place 13 
slips 3ft. 2 inches apart along the south wall occupying 61 
ft., an aisle 4 ft. between them and the magistrate's pew, 
and 5 feet the width of the pew, and we have the length of 
the room, 70 feet. There are sittings for 3 in each of the 
wall slips, and six each in the long seats, 18 sittings abreast ; 
allowing 19 inches for a sitting, and we have 28 ft., with 
two aisles of 4 ft. each, and we have a width of 36 ft., — 
an audience-room of 36x70. If we put the magistrate's pew 
on the south side of the pulpit, we put their wives' pew 
on the north side ; these pews extended from the side walls 
nearly to the pulpit, and afterward each pew was made into 
two. We have still to locate the elder's pew, and the deacon's 
pew. We have four more wall slips than we have slips 
in the center. Let us put the two pews in front of the 
long seats, (they are not raised like the magistrates,) then 
leave a space between them and the pulpit to be occupied by 
the communion-table and chairs or a bench ; — and we have 
the fathers and the mothers provided with seats, but where 
are the children and the servants? There is a unique order* 
in 1650 relative to children and servants crowding into the 
ferry-boat before the elders and magistrates on their way 
home from meeting, — so we know they went to meeting. 

When we come down to 1065, we find a number of young 
men who have married recently, paying for seats, several of 
them "in the gallery" — so that first house had galleries — 
and it was in the gallery that the boys and girls and servants 
sat. So long as the meeting-houses were seated, the boys 

* "Oct. 23, 1650. It was ordered by the townsmen that upon the Lord's 
days meetings, and all other days of public meetings, none shall go into 
the canoe before the magistrates and elders when any of them go, and 
there shall not at any time go above 35 persons at a time into the great 
canoe, and not above six persons at a time in the little canoe, upon penalty 
of 5c/. for every such transgression ; and if any children or servants trans- 
gress this order, their parents or masters shall pay the penalty aforesaid, 
or if they refuse to do it the name of the person so offending shall be re- 
turned to court." 



62 

and girls had no seats assigned tliem beside their parents, 
and the custom preAailed to a considerable extent long after 
the custom of seating the meeting-house had gone out of date. 

When a lad I sat in this front slip, and on one occasion 
received a sharp reprimand at home for not sitting still. I 
had climbed so far over to see who sat directly under me, 
that my mother was alarmed, lest I should lose my balance 
and intrude myself among the old people below. The little 
boys occuj)ied the front slip on the south side, and the little 
girls the one on the north side ; those of larger growth occu- 
pied the pews which were ranged along against the wall. In 
due time I was promoted by some unwritten law from the front 
slip to the pews. I fear if I should tell of the carvings which 
ornamented those pews, so like the carvings to be seen in the 
school-houses of those days, the modern boy would judge us 
harshly. Tything-men were a necessary provision for the 
well-being of the galleries, yet their authority was rarely 
exercised I remember the first piece of anthracite coal I 
ever saw, I saw in one of those gallery pews, — a big boy 
brought it in his pocket, l)ut none of us believed tliat would 
burn. 

This seating the boys by themselves was a crying evil con- 
tinued through two centuries. Its origin is found in the 
measures adopted to secure a seat for each adult, according 
to his official dignity, his age, personal worth, and estate. 
Possibly "there is yet light to break out"' on this question of 
seating the meeting-house, and the historian of the semi-mil- 
lennial of this Church may have occasion to speak of an old 
time custom, of selling seats at auction to enable each man 
to rate himself according to his own estimate. 

The first notice I find of " Seating the meeting-house," 
bears date of 1655, when " The townsmen met and appointed 
somewhere to sit in the meeting-house." It seems a little 
strange that it should have been thought necessary to carry 
these distinctions into the church — into a church which knew 
no distinctions among the brotherhood. The dignitaries of 
the church and the State had their pews, which were conspic- 
uously placed, and into which tbey were duly promoted when 



63 

elevated to office. In 1651 Mr. Clark was elected a magis- 
trate, and at once the Townsmen met, and " Mr. Clark was 
appointed to sit in the great pew." 

But the seating of the common people was a more difficult 
task, which taxed the wisdom and the patience of the Com- 
mittee. The difficulty was largely owing to the fact that 
individuals estimated their own rank higher than the com- 
mittee or their neighbors rated them, and we must bear in 
mind that all the community must have a voice in the matter, 
for the meeting-house belonged to all, and all were taxed for 
the support of the ministry. After one or two generations 
had passed away, there w^as a large class who were not mem- 
bers of the church, who had a pecuniary interest in the mat- 
ter which took them to meeting, and who were likely to be 
tenacious of their rights to a proper recognition when there. 

Before the end of twenty-five years after tlie first meeting- 
house was l)uilt we find that " a request was made l)y some 
to set a housel to shelter their horses in on Sabbath days, 
and other days when they ride * to meeting, on one side of 
the street, against Begat Egglestone's orchard, about 9 or 10 
feet in breadth by his fence, and in length 23 or 24 feet, and 
it was granted." Those who came from a distance and had 
horses came horseback. The man in the saddle, with his 
wife behind him on a pillion, and not unfrequently with a 
baby in her lap. Sometimes a led horse and two or three 
more children represented a single family. People also came 
to meeting from great distances on foot. When this house 
was new, Horace Birge of Windsor Locks, who died but a 
year ago, walked with his father and brothers to this place to 
attend meeting, tlie distance being about six miles. Tradi- 
tion says that a Suffield woman, a member of this church 
before 1698, was a regular attendant here on tlie Sabbath, 
walking the whole distance. 

* One-horse road wagons were not in use until since 1800. The tirst 
one owned in Windsor was made by David Birge of Windsor Loclvs. 
Pung sleighs were in general use ; the runners were made of plank, the 
\ body much like a "lumber box wagon" body of to-day. Less than a 
hundred years ago Seth Dexter and wife of Pinemeadow [Windsor Locks] 
returned to Kochester, Mass. , to visit their parents. She rode on a pillion 
behind him, and carried her babe in her lap. 



64 

After tlie call extended to Mr. Chauncey, in 1667, a party 
who were aggrieved thereby wei-e authorized by the (Jeneral 
Court to withdraw and call an orthodox minister for them- 
selves. They met in the town-house, which stood on the lot 
where your {)arsonag(' now stands. It was originally l>iiiltfor 
a dwelling-house, and bought by the town from Capt. Samuel 
Marshall, in 1654. The seceders called themselves the New 
Society, and their place of meeting the "new meeting-house." 
When Mr. Mather was settled they returned to the old 
church. 

1684. It was " voted by the town that a new meeting- 
house be ))uilt for the more comfortable carrying on the wor- 
ship of God, and the form of the house to be according to 
the meeting-house at Springfield, unless the committee chosen 
do see cause to make alteration in height or Ijreadth." The 
Springfield house was built seven years before, by authority 
of a vote which specified that it should be " 50 feet long, and 
40 feet wide, to be built so high, as it may be accommodated 
for galleries when the town shall see need." It will be seen 
that this model was smaller than our estimate of the first 
house. But our committee may have built higher and 
broader ; the house had dormer windows, and it is not un- 
likely the tradition is true that this second meeting-house, 
built on Palisado Green, "'had two tiers of galleries." 

January, 1716-17. The Ecclesiastical Society voted "that 
the north and south sides of the meeting-house, and the east 
end be made into pews." The expense of this alteration 
was not to be borne by the individuals who were to occupy 
them, as in the first house, but " the society shall be at the 
charge of making the pews around the meeting-house." 

We think this change marks progress towards equality in 
the house of God — a leveling up of the people — not by pull 
ing down the pews of the dignitaries, Init Imilding pews for 
the untitled. A venturing to relax a little the outward defer- 
ence paid to official station, a process which has been carried 
so far in our day that the governor of the commonwealth sits 
in church among the people who elected him ; but for a long 
time after 1716 the dignitaries continued to sit in the highest 
seats, and the common people continued to be seated. 



65 

1718. A committee was appointed to " seat the meeting- 
house," and a committee to " dignify the seats." The meet- 
ing which appointed these committees also prescribed " rules 
for the seaters," viz. : " age and estate to be considered, none 
to be degraded " ; that is, none to be assigned a less honora- 
ble seat than they had previously occupied. 

Twelve years later we have the items of expense paid by 
the society* for " seating the meeting-house." 

" To Jonathan Gillett for warning pew men to meet the 
seaters, to consider what to do. 
"To Dea. Thomas Marshall, 5 days at 3s., seating 

the meeting-house, - -• - - 15s. 

" To John Palmer, Sen., 5 days " " - 15s. 

" To Israel Stoughton, " " " - 15s. 

" To Capt. Moore, " " " 

" To Dr. Samuel Mather for part of a day seating 

the meeting-house, and a copy of the dignification, 
" The Soc'y is indebted to Eliakim Marshall for 19 

dinners to seaters of the meeting-house, from Feb. 

23, to March 18, - - - - - 19s. 

" " For drink, - - 4s. id. 

* Ecclesiastical Societies were constituted when there were two or 
more societies in the same town. The State defined their boundaries, and 
within their own limits each society had all the powers relative to Eccle- 
siastical affairs, the schools, and the "burying yard," which the towns 
before exercised. The society was organized after the parish of East 
(now South) Windsor was set off, though not until about 1703. All the 
property within the Society was subject to a tax, by vote of the Society, 
for the support of the gospel and for schools. This was modified after- 
wards; the first to be exempted from the tax laid by the Congregational 
Society were members of an Episcopal Society, located in the southern 
part of the State. Later still the exemption included all persons who 
belonged to any religious society, and by certificate notified the Clerk of 
the Congregational Society in which they lived of the fact, then such 
person was subject to the taxes laid for the support of such other society 
as they belonged to, and so all property was taxed, directly or indirectly, 
for the maintenance of religious institutions. The new constitution of 
1818 exempts every one from an ecclesiastical tax unless they voluntarily 
assume it. The school system instituted by the same generation, and on 
the same principle, yet remains unchanged. Parties who maintain private 
schools must still pay their tax to support the State system of public in- 
struction. 

9 



66 

" To John Palmer, Sen., for warning persons where 

to sit in the meeting-house, _ . . 6s." 

1737. " The Heaters " were to add to " each man's estate 
20s. for eacli year of his life past." 

From time to time for more than a century there were In- 
dian outbreaks, which called for strict vigilance on the part 
of the whites. At times bodies of soldiers patroled the 
towns ; all the males between the ages of sixteen and sixty 
were required to serve. In 1648 the general court or legisla- 
ture passed the following order : " Whereas it is observed 
that the late order for one in each family to bring arms to 
the meeting-house every Sabbath and Lecture day, has not 
been attended to by divers persons. It is now ordered that 
whosoever hereafter shall at any time neglect the same, shall 
forfeit 12d. for every neglect." About a dozen years later 
we find this town voting " that the guard that carried arms 
to meeting should have half a pound of powder for the two 
years now past, and so likewise those now presently appointed 
for the year to come, and so afterwards." This shows several 
years in succession that a guard was stationed during service 
to prevent a surprise, and we have little doubt they were 
perched up in that lantern on the roof, or out on the plat- 
form where the sexton stood " to sound the trumpet or drum 
to give warnings to meetings." 

Let me say for the Indians, that the little remnant of them 
left here when this church was planted on the Connecticut 
were, so far as I can learn, friendly to the last. Perhaps I 
should except Nassehegan, Sachem of Poquonock, who for a 
time during King Philip's war was held a prisoner at Hart- 
ford. It was the distant tribes who caused alarm and com- 
mitted depredations. 

I was told by one who received the story from the mother 
of the late Ezra Hayden, born 1712, that on one occasion 
when she was present during the Sunday service, the con- 
gregation was startled by a file of unknown Indians who 
strode past the meeting-house and stopped for water at 
Walter Fyler's, now Miss Stiles', well, and then continued on. 
The number of Indians living in Windsor, at the time of 



67 

its settlement, lias been greatly exaggerated. They were 
very weak before they invited the white men to come here to 
help them, and the winter and spring after the Plymouth 
Trading House was built they nearly all died of the small-pox. 
There was a little remnant of a tribe who reserved " a part 
of a meadow " at Poquonock, but I doubt if there were thirty 
in all. The survivors at Plymouth meadow returned with 
their remaining Sachem Aramamet, to their old home at 
Wilson's Station, 1639. The Rev. Frederick Chapman once 
told me that when a boy he lived in the south part of the 
town and saw at one of the neighbors an old Indian woman, 
the last of Aramamefs trilie, who was supported by the town. 
When we come down to 1754 the second meeting-house had 
stood seventy years, and seems to have been in want of con 
siderable repair, and the question was agitated whether to 
build a new house. A committee was called from adjoining 
towns to report wliether the old one was worth repairing, and 
if so, what it would cost. Nothing seems to have come of this, 
for the same year we find a vote " to notify the committee 
ap])ointed by the county court to affix the place for building 
the new meeting-liouse." To ascertain the center of travel, 
the distance was measured from every liouse on the north 
side of the river to the meeting-house, and the sum of these 
distances added together ; then the numl)er of houses multi- 
plied by the distance from the meeting-house, via the ferry 
road, the ferry, thence to the David Rowland house, then 
south, thence west, to the north end of Broad street, and the 
sum of these distances added to the former, then the dis- 
tances from all the houses on the south side to the north end 
of Broad street, and thence via the ferry to the meeting- 
house, were measured, and it was found that the people on 
the north side could reach Broad street with less travel than 
those on the south side must travel to reach Palisad(j Green. 
Mr. Frederick Chapman,* whom some of you remember, once 
told me that tlie people from the vicinity of the old mill, and 
between there and Poquonock, came down a road " through 
the hollow fall" to the river (above the railroad bridge), and 

* Born, 1760. 



68 

crossed in tlieir own boats, rather tlian go down to Broad 
street and around by the ferry ; that if the distances for these 
people had l)een measured by the route they took, instead of 
the public highway, the meeting-house stake would have been 
pitched where the old house stood. 

There was bitter opposition on the north side, and an im- 
mediate application to the legislature to be set off into a sep- 
arate society, which after a few years was granted. In 1755 
the society went forward and appointed a committee to build 
a meeting-house, " where the county court had set the stake." 
In 175G they voted that the house should be 60 feet by 45, 
and 24 feet in height. April 28, 1758, they voted " to meet 
for worship in the future in the new meeting-house. July, 
1758, it was voted " to give the Rev. Mr. Russell that timber 
that was picked out for him a barn, out of the old meeting- 
house timber."" There is little dou])t that the tradition which 
points out Horace Ellsworth's barn as the veritable one built 
out of the timber of the old meeting-liouse erected one hund- 
red and ninety-six years ago on Palisado Green may l^e ac- 
cepted as true. 

This meeting-house, built 1757, stood at the north end of 
Broad street Green, near or on the site of the old Academy 
school-house, in front of the present residence of Mr. Horace 
Bower. As the division of the society did not occur until 
after the meeting-liouse had been located on the south side of 
the river, the seceding body left the first society and church 
there, and the new society took the name of the 7th Society. 
The society north of the river built their meeting-house on 
the west side of the highway, a little north of Mr. Strick- 
land's barn, about a mile and a half north of Palisado Green. 
When the two societies reunited, after a little more than thirty 
years, the house was moved off, and is now the dwelling- 
house of Mr. Parsons. 

To illustrate the custom of the day to raise all funds by 
taxation, however insignificant, we copy a vote of the first 
society to procure step-stones for the meeting-liouse (on the 
south side of the river), seven years after the house was first 
occupied. 



69 

1765. " Voted to raise two farthings on the pound on the 
polls and rateable estate of said society, as set in tlie list of 
1764, for the payment of the step-stones, wliich the meeting- 
house committee had not money to pay ud." 

The two societies were both weak, and l)oth lamented the 
perversity of the other in refusing to come across the river. 
This first society, from their home south of the river, under 
date of 1766, but five years after the church on this side was 
organized, sent a pathetic appeal "to the 7th Society, or our 
brethren on the north side." They premised that in 1754 
they agreed to build a meeting-house ; that a committee ascer- 
tained that the site should be on the south side ; that the 
north side tried to get it reversed ; that in 1757 the meeting- 
house was built, and that in 1759 the north side was set 
off, " which we then took to be a groat misfortune to both, 
which experience proves to 1)C true." They then go on to say, 
" If the north side will annex themselves to us, we will finish 
the meeting-house where it now stands at our own cost within 
five years, and exempt the brethren on the north side from 
taxes to support the ministry for four years." This proposi- 
tion to go on and finish the meeting-house, shows that after 
they had occupied it nine years it was still so far from comple- 
tion that they wanted five years more, and there is a tradition 
that it never was completed, as originally proposed. 

This unfortunate division continued thirty-five years. Two 
years before the reunion was consummated a proposition was 
made to unite the two societies, on condition that a fund be 
raised to support the ministry, a causeway and bridge built 
to connect the two sides of the river, all tlie school funds on 
both sides be put together for the support of an academy ; 
then the meeting-house should be put on one side and tlie 
academy on the other. This happy suggestion united all par- 
ties ; the meeting-house and the academy were balanced, one 
against the other. But to build the causeway was looked 
upon as a great work, too great for the town to Imild, so the 
State was asked for a charter for a grand lottery, which was 
granted, and it was then considered the duty of every good 
citizen to work out the price of as many tickets in the lottery 



70 

as there were members in his family. My grandfather came 
down here day after day, witli his team and his nciiro slave, 
Tom, and earned enough to buy one ticket for each member 
of liis household — all of whom drew blanks. The academy 
was set on the south side of tlie river on the site of the old 
meeting-house, and the meeting-house was brought liome 
again to the palisado. You have the date of the erection of 
this meeting-liouse on one of your miderpinning stones, 1794 ; 
also the date of its predecessor, built in Broad Street, 1757. 
I need not tell you of the changes made in this house during 
this generation — of the square pews changed to slii)s. The 
change on the outside at the front end, which carried with it 
the removal of the square tower, and tlie cupola, which stood 
on columns over the belfry, an architectural crown of the 
house, whicli was built from plans procured by Chief Justice 
Ellsworth,* from tlie meeting-house in Pittsfield, Mass., and I 
think the model of the rest of the structure was procured 




MEETING-HOUSE AS BUILT IN 



from the same source. The conference-house, or chapel, 
south of the river, was built in 1822, and tlie Hayden Station 
chapel in 1876. This latter was built by individual subscrip- 



*Told me by Hcrlchigh Haskell. 



71 

tions, and deeded to this Ecclesiastical Society, and I think 
the other has a similar history, but I have not had time to 
examine the records. 

A word in closing. I have come up here, with others, 
more or less nearly connected through their ancestors with 
this church, to celebrate with you this glad day. I am proud 
to trace my descent from the godly Warham, from his dea- 
cons, Gaylord and Moore, from some who had seats in the 
" great pew," from others who sat in the " short seats," and 
and from others still in the " long seats," in that first meeting- 
house ; and I am proud of my Puritan blood. I count my 
ancestors among tlie communicants of this church, in each 
and every generation, from that day until my sainted motlier 
"fell on sleep." Here I entered into covenant with my 
father's God and this cliurch, in my early manhood, and from 
hence, nearly forty years ago, I went out with ten others of 
your membership, bearing with us your commendation, to 
found another church, the youngest of your planting. Since 
that day it has been my privilege to come in here from time 
to time and look into your faces, until nearly all I once knew 
here now "sleep in the dust of the earth," — are "gathered to 
tlieir fathers." But their places are filled by their children, 
by their children's children, and by others, and the church 
itself abides from generation to generation, and is this day, 
as of old, permitted to look up, reverently, and repeat, Qui 
transtidit sustinet. I love this church for its history ; I love 
it because of my own connection with it in my earlier life. 
The fragrance of the memories that cluster round it " is as 
the smell of a field which the Lord hath blessed." 

The paper by Deacon J. B. Woodford of this Church fol 
lowed. It was prepared largely from the old town and 
society records to show how the ministers of the Church 
were supported of old, and how its friends had aided it by 
bequests from time to time. 



72 



ADDRESS BY DEACON J. B. WOODFORD. 

Inasmuch as deacons are required to look after the tem- 
poral affairs of the church, it may he fitting that on this 
occasion to me has been assigned the somewhat laborious part 
of collecting from our Colonial, Town, Society, and Church 
Records such facts as will depict to us the financial condition 
and history of this Church and its ministry. It would at 
least gratify a laudable curiosity to be informed on good 
authority what pecuniary arrangement was made between 
Rev. John Warham and Rev. John Maverick and the Church 
which was organized in Plymouth, England, in 1630, of which 
they were chosen and installed pastor and teacher. In the 
alisence of such information, we may refer to the first 
Court of the Massachusetts Colony, held in Charlestown 
"August 2:'), 1030, (Present, Gov. Winthrop, Deputy Gov- 
ernor Dudley, Sir Richard Saltonstall, Mr. Ludlow, Mr. Ros- 
siter, Nowell, T. Sharp, Pynchon, and Bradstreet,) wherein the 
first thing propounded is, how the minister shall be main- 
tained. Mr. Wilson and Phillips only proposed; and the 
Court ordered that houses be built for them with convenient 
speed at the public charge. Sir R. Saltonstall undertook to 
see it done at his plantation (Watertown,) for Mr. Phillips ; 
and the governor at the other plantation (Boston,) for Mr. 
Wilson ; Mr. Phillips to have thirty pounds a year, beginning 
at the 1st of Septcml)er next; Mr. Wilson to have twenty 
pounds a year till his wife come over — beginning at the 10th 
of July last; all this at the common charge, those of Matta- 
pan and Salem excepted." 

The fact that the ministers of Dorchester (alias Mattapan) 
did not propose, at this Court, indicates that they were satis- 
factorily provided for by their church. 

After the removal of the Church and their pastor, Mr. War- 
ham, to this place, about four years pass before the date of 
our earliest records. Then we find the following: 

"Oct. 10, 1640. John Wai-ham hath granted from the 
plantation a home Lott witli addition, and some meadow 



vy 

adjoining — sixteen acres more or less." "In the Great 
Meadow Twenty-four acres ; the breadth Twenty Rod more 
or less, the length from the Rivulet West, back to the Great 
River." " Over the Great River for meadow, towards Podunk, 
three acres, the breadth nine rod, more or less, the length 
from the River, back to the swamp seventy-eight rod more or 
less." "Over the Great River, forty rod in breadth, more or 
less, the length from the River back, east, three miles, con- 
taining 240 acres," which added to the preceding lots equals 
283 acres. The mill (sometimes called the Old Warham 
Mill) and land about it is fourscore and two acres, more or 
loss." In Stiles' History of Windsor we find the following, re- 
spectingthis milL ~" MrrWarliam was its first owner, probably , 
by gift from the town, and calls it, in a deed to his wife in \ 
1664, '' My Corn Mill." According to tradition this was the 
first grist-mill in Connecticut, and was resorted to by the peo- 
ple of all the neighboring towns, even from Middletown. Be 
this as it may, it is evidently one of the oldest of Windsor 
institutions." Whether the town gave it to him as a source 
of revenue, or because being Pastor of the Flock they deemed 
him most fit to minister, not only the spiritual, but also the 
temporal Unread, does not clearly appear. But that he did not 
make excessive gains, either from full tolls or extensive pat- 
ronage, is evident from the fact that in 1651, "October 8th, 
after lecture it was voted by the inhabitants then present, 
that Mr. Warham should have one hundred pounds for his 
labors for this year ensuing, and for after time as the town 
shall see meet." 

" In the year 1656, March 3d, was a day of training, and it 
being propounded to the company there assembled, what 
they would give Mr. Warham for this year, that is, from Sep- 
tember to September, it was jointly voted that they would 
give him fourscore and ten pounds." 

"June 1, 1659. This day, in Town-meeting, terms agreed 
upon about the tolls at the mill. Mr. Warham is to have 
the sixteenth part, or two quarts upon a bushel of all English 
and malt grinding, and for Indian Corn a twelfth part, or 
three quarts upon a bushel grinding." 
10 



74 

'Mil 1 Bf)* I, Rohoi-t Hayward was Miller. In 1659 Peter 
JBrowii kept the mill;" thus indicatiiiii- that Mr. Warham did 
not devote his time chiefly to grinding corn. 

"In 1(361, Nov. 11th, The Townsmen met and took into 
consideration how to proceed to know the Town's mind, what 
they would give Mr. Warham for his ministry this year, and 
we judge it meet, rather than warn a town-meeting, to ap- 
point some men to go from house to house and speak with 
every man that pays rates, to know what each man will vol- 
untarily and freely give Mr. Warham for this year ; and the 
men to go ahout to take down on a paper what sum tliey would 
be rated, and whether as formerly or what." This system 
was continued several years ; the name and amount of each 
subscription is still on record. 

" In 1663, Oct. 31st. This was a Town-meeting, and all 
that were present voted, that Mr. Warham should have for 
this year following, as formerly, ninety pounds. Also mani- 
fested themselves willing that there should be a looking out 
for a help for him." 

Matthew Grant's account. " In 1665, Nov. 30th, an item 
as follows: For drawing up Mr. Warham's pay into a method, 
that he might understand what he was to receive of each 
man by his free-will offering, which cost me a great deal 
of time. I had better to have made two rates as formerly, 
yet I set down but 6s. 6(i." 

" In Nov. 30, 1668, The Townsmen met, and it was desired 
of all that were at this meeting, that they would give in their 
papers that we might know their minds, what they would give 
to Mr. Warham for this year going, which ends tlie 25th of 
next March; and some persons to the number of fifty did 
give in ; and the sum of all which they presented rose to 
twenty-seven pounds; what more will be done, I yet know 
not." (Mr. Chauncey was then here.) 

Mr. Warham bought land of several persons, so that, in 
addition to what we have already noticed, he i)robal)ly owned 
a large portion of the land between the Rivulet, (or Farm- 
ington River) and Mill Brook, east of the mill. 

Mr. Warham's first wife died in Dorclicster in 1634. His 



75 

second wife Jane (probably Newbury, widow of Thomas New- 
bury) was the mother of the following children, — Abigail, 
baptized May 27, 1638 ; Hepzi) )ah, l»aptized Aug. 9, 1640, died 
in 1647 ; Sarah, born Aug. 28, 1642 ; Hester, born Dec. 8, 
1644. 

Abigail, married Thomas Allyn, Oct. 21, 1658 ; Esther 
married Rev. Elcazer Mather, Sept. 29, 1659, and second, his 
successor in Northampton, Rev. Stoddard. Sarah married 
Return Strong, May 11, 1664. 

In Oct. 9, 1662, Mr. Warham married Abigail, widow of 
Mr. John Branker. She had property valued at five hundred 
pounds, a part of which was a house which he sold to his 
son-in-law, Thomas Allyn, and in April, 1664, he deeded to 
his wife Abigail his own house, orchard and homo-lot, with 
thirty-three acres of meadow ; his corn-mill with all the land 
thereto belonging, the land of her former husband, except 
the home-lot and house. Mr. Warham died. April 1, 1670. 

Rev. Ephraim Huit came to Windsor August 17, 1639, and 
was called to the office of teacher in this Church December 
10, 1639. We are not told* what terms of settlement were 
proposed to him, but we find on record several grants of land, 
as follows: "Mr. Ephraim Huit in his lifetime had several 
parcels of land granted to him, but he not having finished 
the bounding out all as he desired, omitted the recording 
of any before his death ; and none for him, put it in never 
since, — now 24 years, — and now I am desired by Mr. Daniel 
Clark to record what land was granted to him, and is not 
yet disposed of. He liad granted from the Town on the East 
side of the River, sixty rod in breadth, and Mr. Henry Clark 
liad forty-two rod in breadth, granted next to Huit's, and 
upon exchange Mr. Huit was to have that also, and Mr. 
Clark had some of him in another place, so that now the 
whole breadth is a hundred and two rod and bounds west by 
the Great River, and is to rmi in length Easterly, from the 
River, three miles." 

Also he had lands granted to him at Paquanack which he 
exchanged for other lands to accommodate the neighbors 
who settled there. As we have no full and definite record of 



76 

the financial arrangements made between him and the people, 
perhaps his will, made probal)]}' a little previous to his death 
in 1644, will reveal to us a liberal provision for himself and 
family by the Church and town. 

"The last Will and Testament of Mr. Ephraim Huit of 
Wyndsor in Conectecotte. 

Impri. — I give unto my loving Wife my dwelling-house 
and home-lot, down unto the swamp, with all tlie houseing 
thereon ; also I give unto her my meadow-lot containing by 
estimation fourteen acres more or less ; likewise I give unto 
her my lot of fifteen acres with the vast swamp adjoining 
thereto. 

Ite. — I give unto her Tho, Staires his house and the square 
plot of gardens lying beyond the swamp to the highway. 

Ite. — I give unto my daughter, Susanna, and to my daughter 
Mercy, my great lot lying behind the hog-pen, adjoining 
to Daniel Clark on the one side, and Humphrey Hide's on 
the other, to be divided between them equally. 

Ite. — I give unto my two younger daughters, Lydia and 
Mary, my great lot at the Falls containing fourscore and two 
rod in breadth, to make them two lots, together with the 
meadow ground that lies therein, to be divided also equally 
between them. Provided always, and it is my full intent, 
that these my four daughters shall not enter upon these said 
portions of land until they each of them sliall come to the 
age of one and twenty, and in the meantime it shall be to 
my beloved wife whatever profit shall accrue thereby ; and as 
each of them shall come to the age of one and twenty, so 
each shall enter accordingly upon her portion. 

Provided also, that if either or any of them shall die 
before they come to the said age of one and twenty, then the 
portion intended to her or the so dying, sliall descend upon 
my Wife and be at her dispose. Also, 1 give unto my daugh- 
ters, Susanna and Mercy, all my interest, right and benefit 
that shall arise from the grant of the Town, made me, of 
fifteen acres of meadow, when it shall come first into their 
hands, about Pequanucke, if tbey shall live to the age of 
one and twenty years ; if either die in the interim her portion 
to descend uj)on my wife. 



77 

Ite. — My great Island at the Falls, I give to the Court at 
Hartford, for the use of the Country. 

Ite. — I appoint that my debts be paid out of my personal 
estate, and all the rest, both within-doors and without, wliat- 
soever, I wholly give to my beloved wife, whether land or 
goods. Lastly, I appoint David Wilton and Daniel Clarke to 
be the Executors of this my last Will and Testament, only 
they shall not meddle with anything within doors. And the 
Overseers of this my Will, I intreat the Deacons of our 
Church to be. Ep: Huit." 

The inventory of his property is <£633 19s. \d. of which 
<£259 Is. Id. is the value of his lease for the "Tole" at the 
mill. The records of the town show that an annuity of 
twenty pounds was paid to the widow of their beloved 
teacher from the time of his decease in 1644 to 16o6, or 
thereabouts. 

Respecting the conditions on which Rev. Nathaniel Chauncey 
came to Windsor (in 1667) our town records give very little 
information. There was so large and strong a minority 
opposed to him that the General Court interposed, and, by 
its decrees, and the appointment of an ecclesiastical council, 
endeavored to unite the people, and in the early stages of the 
controversy ordered that " all persons at Windsor shall con- 
tribute, according to their proportions, to the maintenance of 
Mr. Chauncey." 

In October, 1670, the townsmen made a contract with Mr. 
John Witchfield for the use of his house and living for 
Mr. Chauncey ; but this was soon made void, and Mr. Chauncey 
purchased of George Phelps and wife a house and lot, and 
afterward a five-acre pasture, situated probably next north of 
our present parsonage. 

In Deceml)er 2, 1679, the town voted "to allow eighty 
pounds to be divided between Mr. Chauncey and Mr. Wood- 
bridge, according to their respective times and pains in the 
ministry." 

In Novemljer, 1679, Mr. Chauncey received a call to •Hatfield, 
Mass., which he accepted. 

In July, 1681, the town voted "to have the Town-House 



78 

(previously occupied hj the Second Church) finished and 
made suitable for the entertainment of Mr. Samuel Mather, 
if God in his Providence sends him amongst us." "Also 
voted to give him One Hundred pounds upon his settlement, 
and the use of the House and lands belonging to it." This 
provision, for some cause, seems not to have been satisfactory, 
as in the succeeding October we find on record the following 
deed: "Know ye, &c., that I, Tahan Grant, of Windsor, in 
the County of Hartford, and Colony of Connecticut, 131ack- 
smith, for and in consideration of the sum of One Hundred 
& Eighty pounds to me in hand, paid by the Town of Windsor 
and inhabitants of the same upon the account and for the use 
of Mr, Samuel Mather, of Windsor, &c., do grant, bargain 
and sell unto him the said Mather one dwelling-house and 
})arn witii four acres of land adjoining, wliich I purchased of 
Lieut. Whiting," etc. 

In December, 1684, " Mr. Samuel Mather hath granted from 
the Town of Windsor One Hundred acres of land at a place 
commonly called and known by the name of Salsbury Plain." 
He also had two hundred acres granted him by the General 
Court, east of the Great River. 

In January, 1684, " In consideration of One Hundred 
pounds to me secured to be paid by Capt. Benjamin Newbery 
and others as agents in behalf of Mr. Samuel Mather, Tahan 
Grant deeds to Mr. Samuel Mather one piece of land being 
partly pasture and part arable land, containing eight acres ; 
also one lot in the Great Meadow, five acres ; also, one other 
parcel in the Great Meadow, three and a half acres." Mr. 
Mather bought various other pieces of land, some l)y liimself 
and some in company with his brother, Atherton Matlier. 

The records do not give his annual salary until 1712, at 
which time Rev. Jonathan Marsh was his colleague. In 1712, 
Mr. Mather's salary was £50; Mr. Marsh's £114. In 1713, 
Mather's salary was £60 ; Marsh's £124 los. Qd. In 1714, 
Mr. Mather was voted £45, annually, during his life. He 
died March 18th, 1728, aged 77. 

In 1741, by a division of the common lands, a lot contiiin- 
ing eighty acres was laid out to Rev. Samuel Mather's heirs. 



79 

111 171 T) the Society voted to give Rev. Mr. Marsli .£70 this 
year; in 1718, X85 this year; in 1719, X90 this year; in 
1720, X95 to be paid in money or grain ; in 1721, XlOO to be 
paid in money or grain ; in 1722, £100 in money this year; 
in 1724, c£ll0 in money this year ; in 1727, £125 in money 
this year ; in 1730, X130 in money this year ; in 1735, X160 
in money this yeai- ; in 1736, X165 in money this year ; in 
1737, £180 in money this year ; in 1739, £190 in money this 
year; in 1740, £200 in money this year; in 1741, £200, and 
£30 for wood; in 1744, £240, he furnish wood; in 1745, 
£250, he furnish wood ; in 1746, £260, old tenor. 

The town of Windsor, by votes bearing date December, 
1713 and 1716, did give to the Rev. Jonathan Marsh sixty 
acres of land within the township of Windsor, which land was 
surveyed out to him in 1722. 

In January, 1726, Mr. Marsh bought, for £36, of Daniel and 
Thomas White, six acres of land north of the rivulet. In 
April, 1736, Thomas Shepard, in consideration of a certain 
sum of money paid to him by Jonathan Styles of Windsor, 
quit-claimed unto the Rev. Jonathan Marsh all his right and 
title to a certain piece of land in Windsor, containing seventy- 
five acres. 

In May, 1740, Rev. Jonathan Marsh purchased a lot of 
seven acres on the west side of the Great River ; thus showing 
him to have in possession at least 140 acres of land. 

Mr. Marsh died September 8, 1747. The society voted to 
pay his salary in full up to the time of his death, and at a 
society meeting held in April, 1748, " Voted that Considering 
the late depreciating of our Paper Currency and the charge of 
the decent Interment of the Rev. Mr. Jonathan Marsh, our 
Late Worthy Pastor, to Grant to his Heirs £175 money. Old 
Tenor, in addition to what has been hitherto granted." 

After making liberal propositions to two candidates, which 
for some reasons were declined, in February, 1751, the society 
voted " To raise Sixteen Hundred pounds to give Mr. William 
Russell encouragement to settle with us in the work of the 
Gospel Ministry ; Eight Hundred to be raised on the List of 
1750, the other £800 on List of 1751. In addition to this an 



80 

annual Salary of .£67, Coined Silver money at eight shillings 
per ounce, and a suitable supply of Fire-Wood. " In 1760, 
voted, ''To give Rev. William Russell i:lo as a pledge to be 
paid out of money now in Committee's hands." In December, 
1762, voted, " To give Rev. William Russell Ten pounds more 
than the original Covenant was, for the ensuing year." In 
December, 176b, voted, "To give Rev. William Russell Twelve 
pounds more than the original covenant was, the ensuing- 
year." October, 1768, voted, " To give Rev. Mr. Russell for 
salary the ensuing year, .£67 8s. Id.'' Voted, " To get Mr. 
Russell's Wood by a Spell of Sledding." In 1774, voted, 
" Rev. Mr. Russell's Salary, £57 Ss. Id., and X12 for Wood, 
if he will get it himself." 

Mr. Russell died April 19, 1775. 

In 1758 Dea. Samuel Owen sold him two pieces of land ; 
one, about an acre and a quarter lying in the Palazadow on 
the Westerly side of the Old Meeting House, the other lying- 
near Kettle Brook, containing five acres. In 1771 his second 
Wife, Abigail Newberry, bought one acre of land in the 
Great Meadow. 

In May 1775, the Society voted — " That the Society Com- 
mittee let out the Church land and Town Lot, reserving so 
much of said land as to keep one Cow for Mr. Russell's chil- 
dren if they should keep house here this summer, or hire it 
to be kept, if that should be thought l)est." 

August 14, 1775, voted — " That this Society give the Rev, 
Mr. David Sherman Rowland, for his encouragement in tak- 
ing the Pastoral care and charge of this Church and Society, 
the full and sole use of the Church Lands and Town Lot so 
called, according to the design of the Donor, and in addition 
thereto, the sum of Sixty pounds Lawful money and Thirty- 
five cords of wood for his annual Salary so long as he con- 
tinues liis ])astoral relation to this Church and Society." 

Mr. Rowland's reply — " To the First Society in Windsor, 
Gent. — Your Vote relative to the stipulated sum and other 
considerations particularly expressed in said vote as encour- 
agement for my taking the pastoral care and charge of your 
Church and Society, I have endeavored maturely to consider 



81 

and must think them inadequate for the proposed purpose. 
But relying upon it that you mean and intend a Decent and 
comfortable support and considering your professed unanimity, 
I do hereby accept of your invitation and close with your 
proposals, Cheerfully taking upon me the pastoral relation of 
your Church and Society depending upon the power of Divine 
Grace, the aid and assistance of the Blessed Spirit of God, to 
enable me faithfully and impartially to discharge the respec- 
tive duties of a minister of the New Testament to which 
office I have solemnly been set apart according to Apostolic 
direction and am yours in the faith and fellowship of the 
Gospel. 

Dated Windsor, Oct. 16th, A. D. 1775, David Rowland." 
Oct., 1776, Voted— "That Elisha More and Austin Phelps, 
or either of them, inspect the Wood brought to Mr. Rowland 
the ensuing year and see that its good wood and good 
measure " October, 1778, Voted — " That the Rev. Mr. 
Rowland's Salary fur the year should one-half be paid in 
Provisions, or other necessarys, viz : Wheat at 5s. per bushel ; 
Rye at 3.s.-6(£. per bushel ; Indian Corn at 2s.-6fL per bushel ; 
Pork, at 3d. per pound. Beef at two pence half-penny per 
pound, and other things in proportion." Nov. 11, 1779, 
Voted — "• To pay unto the Rev. Mr. David Rowland the sum 
of Ten Hundred pounds. Continental Money as it now passes, 
for his Salary for the year 1779, in lieu of the Sixty pounds 
money due to him for his Salary 1779, or to be paid on the 
20th day of Jan. next, — Provided nevertheless that if any 
person shall choose to pay his proportion of said Sixty Pounds 
in Wheat, Rye, or Indian Corn by said 20th of Jan, next, at 
the price as stated by law by the General Assembly at tlieir 
session at Middletown ; or in any other articles of food or 
clothing that Mr. Rowland shall want, to be computed at 
said stated price and to be paid by said time, such payments 
shall be in lieu of all the moneys voted before this time, for 
tlie payment of said Sixty Pounds that shall be due to Mr. 
Rowland for his Salary for the year 1779." At the same 
Soc. Meeting, Voted, — " That the Society Treasurer shall not 
receive in, any more of the principal of the money due for 
11 



82 

the sui)port of Schooling in this Society, or any other use ; 
and that tlie Society will bear what loss shall be, on account 
of any part of said moneys due to said Society that has been 
or shall be tendered and not received." This vote indicates 
that some of the holders of greenbacks, in those days, did 
not anticipate their permanent use and value, and were 
anxious to pay their loans speedily. 

In Oct. 1780, Voted, — '■• To raise Sixty Pounds, hard money, 
for Mr. Rowland's Salary." From this time onward to the 
date of his death, Jan. 13, 1794, the Society voted sixty 
pounds annually for Mr. Rowland's salary. At a meeting of 
the first Society, March 3, 1790, Voted— " To invite Mr. 
Henry Augustus Rowland to settle in the work of the minis- 
try in this Society as Colleague with the Rev. Mr. Rowland 
our present Pastor, provided the Church shall desire the same 
and agree with him upon the plan of Church Government 
and Discipline, and in case he shall accept of this invitation 
and be regularly ordained, Minister and Pastor of this Church 
and Society, we by this vote covenant and agree to give him, 
during the lifetime of his father, our present Reverend 
Pastor, Fifty Pounds, Lawful Money, per annum, and Twenty 
Pounds per annum for the term of ten years, to commence 
on the death of our present Reverend Pastor, for, and in 
lieu of settlement, and we further covenant and agree with 
him that after the death of his said father his annual Salary 
from this Society, shall be Eighty Pounds, Lawful Money, 
(exclusive of his settlement and the use of the Parsonage 
Lands, to wit : the Hoit's Meadow and the Town Lot so called,) 
during his relation as Pastor and Minister of the said Church 
and Society." Rev. Henry A. Rowland seems to have ac- 
cepted this call and these terms and received his salary 
accordingly until Dec, 1801, when we find a vote of the 
Society (indicating some dissatisfaction,) as follows : " If 
the Rev. Mr. Rowland will relinquish his present Contract 
with this Society, the Society will give him five hundred 
dollars a year, in Coin, during the term of his Ministry with 
them ; subject, however, to a Deduction of one-half for such 
part or parts of said term, if any, as he shall not be able to 
supply the Pulpit." 



83 

Whether, or not, he accepted this proposition, we are not 
informed. That financial affairs were not entirely satisfac- 
tory, appears from a vote at a Society's meeting in Dec, 1803, 
as follows : 

" Oliver Mather, Benjamin Allyn, James Hooker, and Levi 
Hayden were chosen a Committee to consult with Rev. Mr. 
Rowland and see on what terms he will be satisfied, and to see 
what the neighboring Clergy have for their Salaries and the 
amount the several Lists are in this Parish." 

It is not improljable that Mr. Rowland intimated that since 
his ordination the Parish had greatly changed and the de- 
mands upon his pastoral labors had multiplied, and the ability 
of the society to pay a larger salary had increased. There 
had indeed been a great change. The revolt, after a growth 
of thirty years, had been lovingly subdued ; and the Church 
and Society north of the rivulet had returned and united 
with the first Church and Society. But this union had not 
been secured without money and taxation and pledged notes. 
A new meeting-house had l)een built and a union school-house 
provided. Rev. Mr. Hinsdale, who had been pastor of the 
Church north of Little River, was bought off, and discharged 
the First Ecclesiastical Society from further obligations to 
him on the receipt of notes for =£325, and an order on their 
treasurer for £55. A bridge and causeway had been built 
nominally by the Toum, but mostly at the expense of this 
first Society ; as another bridge was built at Poquonock at 
the same time. In 1804, Voted — " To give the Rev. H. A. 
Rowland Twenty Pounds in addition to his permanent Salary, 
during the pleasure of said Society." 

In 1812, the Society voted — "to give the Rev. H. A. Row- 
land, in addition to what said Society now give him, the re- 
mainder of the Interest on the Ministerial Fund in said 
Society, during the pleasure of said Society, after the debt 
due to the Heirs of Oliver Ellsworth, deceased, is paid in full." 
(Perhaps it will surprise some advocates of an afternoon 
preaching service to hear read the following, — Voted — " That 
this Society do recommend to the Rev. Henry A. Rowland to 
have but one exercise on Sundays, from December 1, 1820, 



84 

to March 1, 1821, and the same to commence at lialf an hour 
past Eleven o'clock.") Al)out this time, the degenerate 
children of the hardy Puritans began to agitate the subject 
of having stoves in the Meeting-House ; but as it would affect 
the finances of the society, UV»erty was given, to the advocates 
of this innovation, to put in stoves without expense to the 
Society. However, in 1822, December, it was voted — " That 
two Stoves be purchased for the Meeting-House in this 
Society." 

In December, 18o4, the Society voted — " To rescind the 
two votes giving to Mr. H. A. Rowland an addition to his 
Salary, which votes were passed in 1804, and 1812." This 
seems to have been a not very gentle hint to the pastor, that 
after forty-four years of service he was worthy of an honora- 
ble retirement on half pay. In March, 1835, the Society 
voted — " To authorize their Committee to expend a sum not 
to exceed two hundred dollars for procuring more ministerial 
aid during the year." 

In the following June they instructed their Committee to 
offer Mr. Rowland il250 as the condition on which he will 
relin(|uish his pastoral relation to this people. Mr. Rowland 
accei)ted this offer, and was soon after dismissed by a council. 

This arrangement was not made and executed without 
some disagreeable friction iji the Society's action and spirit ; 
and, apparently to avoid the like in future, the Society, in 
Jan., 1836, voted — " To give the Rev. Charles Walker an 
invitation to settle in the ministry, on condition that he is to 
receive the annual interest of tlieir Funds and the rents of 
their lands, and that his Salary be rt()50 per year, provided 
the deficiency of said -^650 be paid V)y Subscription, or with- 
out any Tax u]ton the Society; and that said Contract be 
dissolved whenever Mr. Walker or the Society give six months 
notice thereof." This contract was dissolved after an ex 
istence of about one year ; by whose yxotice^ the record saitli 
not. After trying various candidates, the Society next invited 
Rev. S. D. Jewett to became pastor of this Church and 
Society on a Salary of tdSO per annum. Inasmuch as Mr. 
Jewett and his successors in the pastorate are still living and 



85 

some of them with us to-day, I need not further pursue this 
theme. 

As we have ah^eady intimated, jthe principal source of 
revenue to supjiort the temporal life of the Church and its 
ministry, has been taxation direct down to about 1840. This 
was done by the town until 1712, when our Ecclesiastical 
Society records begin. Yet our records and our present fund 
bear testimony to the deep and loving interest in its growth 
and permanence, cherished by many of its earlier members, 
" whose works do follow them." Among these the earliest 
is Mrs. Jane Hosford. She was the widow of Henry Foukes, 
who died here in Sept. 1640, and left to his widow twenty 
acres of meadow, and swamp adjoining in the lower end of 
the second meadow. "• This land was reserved to herself in 
her own propriety and Dispose," when she married the 
widower, William Hosford. 

The following is a copy of her will in part : 

" July 23d, 1655. This is the last Will and Testament of 
Jane Hosford, the Wife of Mr. Wm. Hosford — I, being going- 
after my Husband into Old-England, and not knowing when 
God may take me out of this Life, do dispose of my Goods 
as followeth : Imp"", I do bequeath and it is my will that 
after my decease the Church of Windsor, of which I am 
now a member, shall have aijd forever enjoy that piece of 
Meadow Land which belongeth unto me called Hoytes-Meadow, 
for the use of Pastor or Teacher as the Church shall see 
most need, and when one dead to go successively always." 
John Warham was one of the three witnesses to this Will. 

Mrs. Hosford afterwards gave the use of this land to her 
stepson, John Hosford, (during her life,) who, claiming 
that he had no knowledge of her death in England, held on 
to the use of the land, until legal proceedings on the part of 
the Society compelled him to relinquish it in Sept., 1695. 

This meadow land was sold in 1861 by this Ecclesiastical 
Society to the Thrall brothers, for $2,000, and the interest of 
this is still applied to tlie support of Jolm Warliam's (not 
immediate ) successor. 

Sometime previous to 1740, Lieut. Aln-aliam Phel}>s in liis 



86 

will gave twenty pounds for the use of schooling to that part 
of Mr. Marsh's society north of the Rivulet. Benoni Bissell, 
who died in 1761, made certain bequests to relatives: — he 
says in his will, " After my just debts, Funeral Expenses 
and the Legacies above given are paid, I give and bequeath 
unto the First Society in Windsor all the remaining part of 
my Estate both real and personal that I have not before dis- 
posed of, to be to them and their successors forever to be 
disposed of in the following manner, viz : That after my just 
debts, funeral expenses and legacies are paid, the remainder 
to be sold in a convenient time as the Society shall agree, 
and the money that the same sliall sell for to be loaned out 
by said Society and the interest thereof be used and improved 
yearly for the supporting of schooling in said First Society 
forever." 

Most of the present Union School Fund (82,080) is the 
result of Benoni's gift. 

Dr. Timothy Mather, who died April 5, 1788, provides in 
his will as follows: He gives to his wife Roxanna his house 
and the land on which it stands, so far as it belongs to him, 
and her heirs forever. Also one cow and the whole of his 
household furniture, and one-third part of all the remainder 
of his personal estate. To his son Timothy all the residue 
of his estate, and if this son ^die before the age of twenty- 
one years, then he gives to his wife the use of one quarter of 
the son's portion while she shall remain his widow, and the 
other three-quarters he gave to the First Ecclesiastical Society 
in Windsor to be loaned, and the annual interest tliereof 
applied to the support of the minister of said Society. And 
the said quarter given to his wife during her widowhood as 
aforesaid he gave to said society, for the purpose aforesaid, 
after she shall marry or die. This son died in 1792 or 1793, 
six or seven years of age, and the widow married in 1802, 
when the son's entire portion of the estate belonged to this 
Church and Society. 

Dr. Mather's whole estate was inventoried at .£1,882 13s. 
Joseph Marsh, a son of Rev. Jonathan Marsh, in his will 
gave the use of all his property to his wife Elizal)eth during 



87 



her life, and after her decease he gives the same to the 
Society of North Windsor, where he then lived, to l)e improved 
by them for the support of the Gospel ministry or schooling 
in said Society as they judge best. The inventory of his 
estate amounts to £205 lis. Id. 

In 1794, after five conditions or articles of agreement for 
the union of the First Society and the Society of North Wind- 
sor is the following : These conditions being performed, we sev- 
erally engage to pay or secure to be paid, to the treasurer of the 
First Society for the sole and perpetual use of supporting the 
Gospel ministry in the same, the sums respectively affixed to 
our names, provided however that the bonds we may give shall 
not be liable to be sued so long as we shall annually pay six 
per cent, interest on the same, and stand ready to give such 
further reasonable security as may at any time be requested 
by said Society's Committee. 



Hezh Chaffee, 


X60 


Oliver Ellsworth, 


£100 


Horace Hooker, 


50 


James Hooker, 


100 


Alex. Wolcott, Jr., 


20 


Jerijah Barber, 


100 


Hez'i Chaffee, Jr., 


30 


Daniel Phelps, 


25 


Josiah Allyn, 


30 


Asa Moore, 


7 


Johnth Ellsworth, 


60 


Increase Mather, 


12 


Elijah Mather, 


40 


George Phel[)s, 


10 


W'". Russell, 


20 


George Loomis, 


10 


Sam'i W. Allyn, 


30 


Roger Moore, 


50 


Giles Ellsworth, 


50 


Edward Moore, 


30 


Roger Newberry, 


50 


George Warner, 


6 


Oliver Mather, 


50 


Phineas Wilson, 


25 


Ozias Lomis, 


50 


John Filley, 


30 


Roger Phelps, 


25 


Eliakim Marshall, 


10 


Gideon Barber, 


10 


Elisha Moore, 


30 


Daniel Gillett, 


20 


Elihu Drake, 


10 


Sirajah Loomis, 


10 


Benj. Allyn, 


15 


Chas. Wolcott, 


15 


Elnathan Filley, 


10 


Abel Strong, 


5 


Philip Halsey, 


5 


Austin Phelps, 


10 




=£1220 


The above, so far 


as I know 


, was the last contril)ution to 


the fund for the support of the ministry, and 


the entire 



88 

fund for this purpose now amounts to |il0,953, of which 
$1,700 is invested in the parso]iaj2,(', and the remainder, 
5f9,2o3, is loaned on mortgaged security. The interest on the 
ahove, and about $1,000 received annually for the rent of 
slips, now furnish the means of paying the ordinary c\|)enses 
of this Ecclesiastical Society. Incidentals, repairs and im- 
provements require an occasional subscription-paper and the 
ingenious devices of the Ladies' Society. 

In Dec, 1805, the Society voted that, as a token of respect 
to the memory of the late Henry Allyn, Esq., the l)ell which 
he gave to this society be tolled one hour at the setting of 
the sun, on the 8th day of May, in each year perpetually — 
that being the day of his decease. 

December 25, 1871, Mr. William S. Pierson proposed that he 
and his sister Olivia, would place an organ in the church of 
the First Ecclesiastical Society in Windsor, and give it to 
said Society on condition that a fund to be called "• The Music 
Fund," of at least $1,500, shall be raised and j)aid to said 
Society in trust, etc. A fund of $1,555 was raised by sub- 
scription, and the beautiful and valuable organ before our eyes 
is a present and constant testimonial to the fidelity and gen- 
erosity of the donors. Yet not fully satisfied with what he 
had already done, our lamented benefactor, a little previous to 
his death, in his last will added $2,000 to this Music Fund. 
Althougli we sadly miss his i)rescnce with us, still the Cluirch 
and Society have unmistakable evidence that his si)irit of lib- 
erality still survives in his bereaved household. When our 
sanctuary is illumined by the brilliant chandelier, depend- 
ing from its arched ceiling, we are agreeably reminded of our 
neighbor, Mr. Oliver R,. Holcomb, who gave $150 toward its 
purchase. 

In conclusion, I may recall the name of a beloved sister 
of this Church, Miss Mary Ann Hayden, who, before going 
to the mansions above, manifested her deep interest in the 
Sal)bath-school l)y giving $200 as a fund for its benefit in 
furnishing suitable books for its library. 



89 



The evening services at 7 o'clock were deeply interesting. 
The first address, after the singing of Old Denmark, was by 
Rev. Dr. Tarbox, on Ancient Singing. He said : 



SINGING CUSTOMS IN THE NEW ENGLAND 
CHURCHES. 

When the Pilgrims came from Holland to Plymouth in 
1620, they brought with them Henry Ainsworth's metrical 
version of the Psalms, for use in their public worship. Ains- 
worth was one of the pastors of the English Church at 
Amsterdam. Like the Pilgrims, he had been driven out of 
England by persecution, and Holland was then an asylum for 
the oppressed. This book, first published in Holland in 1612, 
the Pilgrims used in their pul)lic worship at Plymouth for 
more than seventy years, or down to the year 1692. 

When the Puritans ten years later came to the Massachusetts 
Bay, they brought with them the version of the Psalms by 
Sternhold & Hopkins. They came directly from England and 
from the parish churches, and so they brought along the book 
to which they had been accustomed. This version was Ijegun 
by Thomas Sternhold in the reign of Heniy VIII. He was 
of the court of Henry, but being a man of a sober, religious 
character, he was disgusted with the silly songs which were 
sung about the court, and he versified some of the Psalms of 
David to take their place. The plan was successful. The 
idea was a novel one and was favorably received. From their 
use in the court they passed into the churches. Sternhold 
himself only versified about forty of the Psalms. He died 
in 1549. But the enterprise was followed up by John Hop- 
kins and others, till in 1562 the whole book of Psalms was 
completed and published. This book held its place among 
the Established Churches of England for one hundred and 
forty years, or till 1698, when it was superseded by the version 
of Tate & Brady. 

But the early Puritan divines of New England were not 
satisfied with the version of Sternhold & Hopkins which they 
brought with them. It was not literal enough. They had 
'12 



90 

only been hero seven or eight years, when they set al)Out the 
task of i)rci»aring- a version of their own. The book was 
completed and })ublished in 1G40. It was the first Ijook 
issued from the new printing-press which had just been 
brought over. This book has been called the Bay Psalm 
Book, a term applied to the first edition ; more generally it is 
known as the New England Psalm Book. These are the 
names in popular use ; but the real title page reads, " The 
whole Book of Psalms, faithfully translated into English 
Metre." 

Among the Puritan churches of New England this book by 
degrees displaced Sternliold & Hopkins ; and yet it is very 
difficult to tell exactly when, in the case of an individual 
church, the one went out and the other came in. Our fathers 
were very busy, and all these matters came along in their 
course, and were seldom committed to writing. 

I have no doubt that when Warham and his congregation 
reached here in 1636 they brought with them, bound up in 
their bibles, this version of Sternhold & Hopkins. I have no 
doulit that before a great many years had passed they took the 
New England Psalm Book ; but it would probably be difficult 
to find the exact date of the change. At whatever time the 
new version came, it stayed probably till the year 1766. In 
some extracts from your church records on this general subject 
(kindly sent me by Mr. J. H. Hayden), I find that in the year 
1766 this Church voted to use " Watts' Psalms in the public 
worship in this Society in the future." The New England 
Psalm Book was here probably more than a hundred years. 

Almost all the psalms in these old versions were put into 
what we call common meter. It was a simple succession of 
alternate lines in eight and six syllables. A very few were 
cast in other meters. Thomas Lechford, in his "• Plaine Deal- 
ing, or Newes from New England," written in 1640, gives us 
an exact account of the order of public worship in Massachu- 
setts Bay in the earliest years. He says : " The publique 
worship is in as faire a meeting-house as they can provide, 
wherein, in most places, they have been at great charges. 
Every Sabbath or Lord's day they come together at Boston 



91 

by wringing of a bell about nine of the clock or before. The 
Pastor begins with solemn prayer, continuing about a quarter 
of an houre. The Teacher then readeth and expoundeth a 
Chapter ; then a Psalme is sung, whichever, one of the ruling 
Elders dictates. After that the Pastor preacheth a Sermon, 
and sometimes extempore exhorts. Then the Teacher con- 
cludes with a prayer and a blessing About two in 

the afternoone, they repaire to the meeting-house againe ; and 
then the Pastor begins, as before noone, and a Psalme being 
sung, the Teacher makes a Sermon. He was wont, when I 
came first, to read and expound a Chapter also before his 
Sermon in the afternoone. After and before his Sermon he 
prayeth." 

This description refers to the old First Church of Boston, in 
which Mr. John Wilson was pastor and Mr. John Cotton was 
teacher. It will be noticed that tliere was only one singing 
in the forenoon and one in the afternoon. That was the 
early custom. But it must be borne in mind that they usually 
sang the whole psalm through, whether longer or shorter. 
The singing, too, was rather slow in its motions in those old 
times, so that the singing of the one psalm not unfrequently 
occupied from a quarter to half an hour. 

In the extract aliove given, one of the Ruling Elders gives 
out the psalm to be sung. That was a part of liis official 
duty, and from the wording in the extract it would appear 
that lie made a selection among the psalms according to his 
own judgment. Afterward it came to be the custom in 
many churches, and probably in most, to sing the psalms in 
their order, from Sabbath to Sabbath, until the book was 
finished, and then go back again to the beginning. After a 
while the office of Ruling Elder ceased in most of the 
churches. (Very few, comparatively, of the New England 
churches had Ruling Elders later than the year 1700, but in 
some the office continued even till the present century.) 
After the Ruling Elder had gone, it was usually made the 
business of one of the Deacons to give out the psalm. The 
" deaconing off the psalm," as it was called, reading one or 
two lines at a time during the singing, was not common in 



92 

the first generation. It came in afterwards, when hymn-books 
were scarce, and when some of the congregation who could 
sing could not read. This custom was not introduced into 
the Plymouth Church until 1680. It was probably in some 
churches long before that time, and in the early part of the 
last century we judge that the practice had become general. 

Among the Puritans of the Bay a great variety of questions 
had to be discussed in connection with this matter of singing 
in the churches. I am not aware that any similar discussions 
went on among the Pilgrims of Plymouth. John Robinson, 
their pastor, had laid down in his writings that singing psalms 
was one of the six parts of appropriate public worship, and 
the Pilgrims apparently rested quietly in that opinion. But 
some of the questions which Mr. John Cotton, of Boston, felt 
called upon to discuss in his tract of 1647 were the following : 

1. Whether psalms should be sung with a lively voice (or 
as we should say with the living voice), or whether it ought 
not, scripturally, to be confined to " singing and making 
melody in our hearts unto the Lord." 

2. Whether one person ought not to do the singing, and 
the rest listen and join in their hearts, and say, Amen. 

3. Whether women ought to Ije allowed to sing in the 
churches ; ^. e., whether this is not a violation of the apostle's 
rule, that the women should keep silence in the churches. 

4. Whether "carnall men and Pagans" should sing, or 
Christians only. 

5. " Whether it is lawful to sing psalms in Meter devised 
by men." 

6. Whether it is lawful to sing in tunes invented by men. 

7. Whether it is lawful to read the psalm in order to the 
singing. 

After all these and other similar discussions, it yet re- 
mained true that many individuals opposed the whole business 
of singing in the churches. There were repeated instances 
where men were fined and otherwise punished for speaking 
contemptuously of the practice. Indeed, one writer at least 
speaks of the Antipsahiiisfs, as though there were enough of 
this class of people to be designated by a party name. 



93 

The Psalm-Books which our fathers brought to these shores 
were well supplied with tunes, interspersed with the psalms. 
This was true alike of Ainsworth's book, which the Pilgrims 
used, and of Sternhold & Hopkins', which the Puritans used. 
But the New England Psalm-Book was not furnished with 
tunes. The practice grew up among the people of writing out 
a few of the old tunes which had been used in the former 
books, and pasting or stitching them into their psalm-books. 
This could be done without great labor, as the air only was 
written. At the same time the practice resulted in having 
only a few tunes, over against the many that were in the 
ancient books. Year by year, under the new arrangement, 
the singing tended to run down and to become more and more 
restricted, as to tunes, till at length written music was almost 
wholly abandoned and the congregations came to sing by rote. 
Only a few tunes were kept alive in the knowledge of the 
people, and those were passed along from generation to gene- 
ration. Thomas Lechford, from whom we have already 
quoted, who was in Boston in 1639 and 1640, saw this ten- 
dency, even in his day. Thomas Lechford was an English 
lawyer, of a semi-puritanical turn of mind, who came over 
with the expectation of making his home in this country. 
But the early fathers had no place for lawyers, and after some 
unpleasant experiences he returned to England and published 
his book entitled " Plain Dealing." We are indebted to him 
for more minute information, on some points of the early New 
England history, than to any one else. On the subject of 
singing in churches he left this wise suggestion : 

" If Psalms and Hymns and Spiritual Songs are to be sung 
in the Church, and to sing melodiously and witli good har- 
mony is the gift of God, and uncomely singing a kind of sin 
in the holy AssemVilies, why should not the chief leaders and 
rulers of the Church appoint some, in their stead, to take care 
of the singings in the Church ? And may not some be fitter to 
lead in singing than others ? And lest they may fall out of 
their tunes to jarring, why may they not use the help of some 
musicall instruments ? And lest they should want able men 
this way, why should they not take care that some children 
be trained up in MusiqueV" 



94 

There were some among the early fathers who had similar 
ideas, and for a time in Harvard College music was a branch 
of instruction. Rev. Thomas Symmes of Bradford, who was 
one of the chief ministers of Massachusetts in the early part 
of the last century, and who was exceedingly active then as a 
reformer in singing, says : " It was studied, known, and ap- 
proved of in our college, many years after its first founding. 
This is evident from the Musical Theses whicli were formerly 
printed, and from some writings containing some tunes with 
directions for singing l)y note." 

But Dr. Buslmell's famous sermon, — " Barbarism the first 
danger," — was thoroughly exemplified in the history of New 
England singing in the churches. From 1650, on till near the 
close of that century, things went from bad to worse, continu- 
ally. The people had lost almost all knowledge of written 
music. George Hood, in his " History of Music in New Eng- 
land," says : " About the year 1690 there was, for want of a 
proper supply of tunes, a general dulness and monotony in 
the music of the church. Many congregations had scarcely 
more than three or four tunes which they could sing. This 
great scarcity created the necessity of appending music to the 
Psalm-Book, which was done about the year 1690. . . . The 
tunes are named Litchfield, Low Dutcli or Canterbury, York, 
Windsor, Cambridge, St. David's, Martyr's, Hackney or St. 
Mary's ; the 100, 115, 119, and 14S Psalm Tunes." 

But the disease was too deeply seated to be ciired by these 
means. It was no small task, for people who liad lost or 
who never had knowledge of written music, to learn the art. 
Teachers were needful, and it would have been very difficult 
to procure them. But the worst part of tlie case was tliat 
the peo]>le did not want any thing better, and did not believe 
there was any thing l)etter. They did not believe tliat any 
one could be taught to sing liy note, except lie had first learned 
tlie tune by rote. There is nothing more self-conceited tlian 
profound ignorance. No where does light find a harder 
struggle to effect an entrance than into minds that most need 
light. And so the old jargon went on, and people found a 
kind of luxury in gathering together on the Sabbatli, and 



95 

droning out a psalm for the space of fifteen minutes or so, 
that must have sounded something like an Irish wake. They 
sang by rote, by traditions received from the fathers, and 
traditions are very changeable an,d uncertain. For example : 
every congregation had some one to set the tune and lead the 
singing. This man naturally wished to magnify his office. 
And so we will suppose that he gave out the tune York to be 
sung. He miglit have his private ideas as to liow rapidly or 
how slowly it ought to be sung ; he miglit wish to introduce 
a few quirks of his own to illustrate his genius, and so in his 
day he would lead the people to sing the tune in such a man- 
ner that it would hardly be recognized as the tune York in 
another congregation five miles away. 

Such was the sad condition of our congregational singing 
in the early years of the last century. But about the year 
1720 several of the prominent ministers in different [)arts of 
New England determined, if possible, to work a reform, and 
teach the people again to sing by note, or by rule. 

Rev. Thomas Walter was a minister of Roxbury, Mass., 
from 1718 to 1725, when he died. He was one of the early 
movers toward this reform in Church Singing. The follow- 
ing is his testimony as to the condition of this part of pub- 
lic worship in his day. 

"■ About the commencement of the eighteenth century, 
music had been so much neglected that few congregations 
could sing more than four or five tunes, and these few had 
become so mutilated, tortured and twisted, that tlie psalm- 
singing had become a mere disorderly noise, left to the mercy 
of every unskillful throat to chop and alter, twist and change, 
according to their odd fancy — sounding like five hundred 
tunes scored out at the same time, and so little in time tliat 
they were often one or two words apart ; so hideous as to be 
bad beyond expression, and so drawling that we sometimes 
had to pause twice on one word to take breath ; and the 
decline had been so gradual that the very confusion and dis- 
cord seemed to have become grateful to their ears, while 
melody sung in tune and time was offensive ; and when it 
was heard that tunes were sung by note, they argued that 



96 

the new way, as it was called, was an unknown tongue, not 
melodious as the old — made disturbance in churches, was 
needless — a contrivance of the designing to get money, re- 
quired too mucli time, and made the young disorderly ; old 
way good enough." 

A writer in the Nciv England Chronicle^ about the same 
time (/. f, in 1723), said, "Truly I have a great jealousy 
that if we once begin to sing by note, the next thing will be 
to pray by rule, and preach by rule, and then comes Popery." 

But it is time that we turn from the state of things in 
general to this particular Church and congregation. This, 
l)eing one of the very oldest churches in New England, with 
large historic memories would very naturally incline to con- 
servatism. It would set its foot down firmly against all 
loose and fanciful innovations. The daughter, on the other 
side of the river, sixty-four years younger than the mother, 
and hardly out of its minority when this singing reform set 
in, might run after new things, but the mother must be staid 
and sober, and stand fast " for the faith which was once de- 
livered unto the saints." 

At the time when this reform commenced in earnest, in 
various parts of New England, Rev. Samuel Mather and 
Rev. Jonathan Marsh were united here in the ministry. Mr. 
Mather died in 1726, and was never disturbed, probably, by 
this innovating spirit. He heard the news of it afar off, but 
the agitation had not begun liere. Mr. Marsh, who was set- 
tled in 1709, continued till 1747. He was a witness of the 
strife, though what part he may have taken in it I do not 
know. 

To give an exact idea of the contest which was waged 
here on this subject, nothing can compare witli some extracts 
from your parish records, which Mr. Hayden sent me. These 
present the whole matter in a shape which is as clear as a 
picture. In the early part of the year 1730, everything here 
seems to have been moving on quietly in the old fashion. 
Tliougli many other churches in various parts of New Eng- 
land had, before that time, been subject to strifes and divis- 
ions over this matter, peace, apparently, had prevailed here 



97 



up to that time. The first item from the record-book reads 

as follows: ,111, n 

1729-30. Votrd, "That Deacon Thomas Marshall shall 

set the Psalm on Sabbath days." 

Between the time of this action and July, 1736, Deacon 
Marshall seems to have died, and the following record is long 

and curious. 

July 1736. " To consider what was to be done respectmg 
that part of public worship called singing: whether in public 
as on the Sabbath days, lecture days etc., they would smg 
the way that Deacon Marshall usually sang in his hfe time, 
commonly called the 'old way,' or whether they would sing 
in the way taught by Mr. Beal, commonly called, 'by rule: 
and when the Society had discoursed the matter, the mod- 
erator proposed to vote for the two ways as. followeth: 
Those who were for singing in public in the way practised 
by Deacon Marshall should hold up their hands and be 
counted; and then those that were desirous to smg m Mr. 
Beal's way, called 'by rule,' would after show their minds 
by the same sign. But when the vote was passed, there 
beinc many voters, it was difficult to take the exact num- 
ber of votes in order to determine on which side the 
maiority was. Whereupon the moderator ordered all the 
voters to go out of the seats and stand in the alleys, and then 
those who were for Deacon Marshall's way should go m the 
men's seats, and those that were for Mr. Beal's way should 
g-oin the women's seats; and after many objections made 
against that way-which prevailed not with the i^oderator- 
itwas complied with, and the moderator desired that those 
that were of the mind that the way to be practiced for smgmg 
in the future, on the Sabbath etc., should be the way sung by 
Deacon Marshall as aforesaid, would signify the same by 
holding up their hands to be counted; and then the mod- 
erator and myself went and counted the votes, -^d the mod- 
erator asked" me how many there was. I answered 42, and 
he said there was 63 or 64 ; and then we both counted again 
and agreed in the number being 43. The moderator was 
about to count the number of votes for Mr. Beal's way of 
13 



98 

singing, called 'by rule,' but it was offered whether it would 
not be better to order the voters to pass out of the meeting- 
house door, and then be counted, which method (though 
many objected against) was ordered by the moderator, and 
those that were for Deacon Marshall's way of singing as 
aforesaid were ordered to pass out of the meeting-house door 
and then be counted, who did accordingly, and the number 
was 44 or 45. Then the moderator proceeded and desired 
that those who were for singing in public the way that Mr. 
Beal taught, would draw out of their seats, and pass out of 
tho door and be counted. They replied that they were ready 
to show their minds, in any proper way, where they were, if 
they might be directed thereto, but would not go out of the 
door to do the same, and desired that they might be led to a 
vote where they were, and they were ready to show their 
minds; which the moderator refused to do. and thereupon 
declared, that it was voted, that Deacon Marshall's way of 
singing, called the ' old way,' should be sung in public for the 
future, and ordered me to record the same as the vote of the 
society, which I refused to do under the circumstances thereof, 
and have recorded the facts and proceedings." 

We do not know who the scribe was, but he certainly de- 
serves credit for his sturdy adherence to the facts. It is not 
very difficult, however, from this record to make out on which 
side the moderator was, and on which side the scribe was. 
Then follows a brief record for the same year. 

1736. "-Voted — That Deacon John Wilson set the Psalm 
for the future." 

But the matter could not slumber here. A few months 
later it came up again. 

Jan. 1736-7. " It was proposed whether the Society would 
sing on tlie Sabbath and the public meetings for the year 
ensuing, only in the way that Deacon Marshall used to sing, 
called the " old way," — Negative. 

"• It was proposed &c. as above, to sing one-half the day in 
the old way, and the other part in the new way, called " by 
rule " — affirmative. 

" Voted, That Deacon John Wilson set the Psalm." 



99 

Then at last comes the triumph of the reformers. 

" Feb. 1739-40. Voted, That the way of singing in public 
shall be by the way or method commonly called singing by 
rule, or the way Mr. Beal taught this Society. 

" Voted, That Deacon John Wilson tune the Psalm. 

" Voted, That Deacon John Cook sliall read the Psalm." 

Some of you may know who this Mr Beal was that stood 
thus as the representative of the new style of singing. This 
name, constantly recurring in the foregoing record, brought to 
my mind a passage which I copied, some years ago, from 
Timothy Edwards' account book, in preparing an article for 
the Congregational Quarterly. Mr. Edwards was then in the 
midst of his ministry on the other side of the river, and was 
doubtless much more in favor of the new style of singing 
than many of his brother ministers. He was indeed one who 
took an active part in the reform. His motive for making 
his record about Mr. Beal was to keep an exact account of 
his board. But the passage, in this connection, is interesting. 
Mr. Edwards writes : 

" March 18, 1727. Mr. George Beale and his son Matthew 
came to my house at noon, and went that day to Dinner, both 
of them, and at night to Supper, and Lay here that night and 
went to breakfast and dinner the next day : in ye afternoon 
went to Hartford, viz. on Tuesday. 

" March 17. Yy both came again on Friday and Supped 
and Lodged here, and continued here until ye next Tuesday 
after dinner and y» went again in the afternoon to Hartford. 

" March "24'^!'. On Friday, in the evening yy came again. 
Supped and Lodged here and continued with us till Tuesday 
after dinner, viz. sometime in y" afternoon went to Hartford. 

"March 31. Yy came again on Friday evening and con- 
tinued here till Tuesday after dinner as before. 

" And so Mr. Beale hath l)een here after the same manner 
ever sines, with his son, only j^ week our Singing Lecture 
was, his son was here from the Friday night of the week be- 
fore all ye time to ye next Thursday after dinner. 

This was written May 9th. 



100 

" July 12. Mr. Beale and his son went in the forenoon to 
the west side of y river and came home y^ evening. 

"July 17. Mr. Beale and his son went again to the west 
side of the river, and returned July 18, in the evening." 

Undoubtedly this was the Mr. Beal whose way of singing 
caused such disturbance in your parish. He and his son were 
engaged in the business of introducing the new style of sing- 
ing to the congregations. He was harbored and befriended 
by Mr. Edwards, who wanted to see the work go on. I have 
read only a portion of Mr. Edwards' record concerning him. 
DurinsT the five months while he and his son made Mr. 
Edwards' house their home, off and on, they went to Hartford, 
to Springfield, to Willington, and to the west side of the river. 
They were undoubtedly about this singing business. But I 
have not been able to find where this Mr. Beal came from, 
or whither he went after leaving Mr. Edwards' house in July, 
1727. It is to be noticed that Mr. Beal's way, commonly 
called singing by rule, did not fully prevail in this society 
until twelve years after he tabernacled with Mr. Edwards, — 
showing that there was a good, strong conservative force in 
this ancient parish. 

Under this new style of things the congregational singing 
of New England was greatly improved. And so matters went 
on till just before the revolutionary war, when Mr. William 
Billings arose. He was accounted a great musical genius. 
He was born in Boston in 1746, and whether for good or evil, 
certainly wrought a wondrous revolution. Under him came 
church choirs, fuging-tunes, singing-schools, the bass-viol, and 
various other appurtenances unknown to the fathers. His 
music went through the churches like a fresh breeze. There 
are many here to-day who can at least remember the after- 
wave of his sweeping influence. His was a very brilliant and 
showy career, and good and evil were mingled in it. Even 
our young people have had a taste of this style in Old Polks' 
Concerts. 

From a work entitled " Hymns and Choirs," prepared by 
Drs. Park and Phelps of Andover, assisted by Dr. Furber of 
Newton, Mass., we take the following extract : 



101 

" A second period of great musical degeneracy was occa- 
sioned not as before, by a total neglect of musical culture, but 
by the introduction of the coarse, noisy tunes of Billings. 
These tunes brought with them the doom of congregational 
singing and a general perversion of musical taste. They con- 
tinued in use about thirty years, just long enough for a sing- 
ing generation to pass away, and a generation wholly unac- 
customed to congregational singing to come into its place ; 
just long enough to break the thread of this mode of praise 
and abolish a custom which would otherwise have descended 
by gradual transmission to us." 

It will be seen by the review now taken, that congregational 
singing has prevailed through the main part of our New Eng- 
land history. Choirs were unknown till after the middle of 
the last century. 

In conclusion, it is not to l)e denied that the efforts to im- 
prove the singing in our churches, in the last century and in 
the present, have been closely allied to an improved condition, 
spiritually, in our churches. In my early life, when I first 
learned to sing in Scantic parish, I remember how often 
good Mr. Bartlett, our life-long minister, used to say, that he 
always expected a revival of religion to follow the singing- 
school. As I looked at things then, I know it used to strike 
me as a little strange that so great a result should follow 
from such a cause. But later observation led me to think he 
was correct so far as regarded his own parish, and on the 
broad scale the history of the churches of New England will 
bear witness to the general truth of that remark. 

Were there time the narrative might be continued down to 
the present day, and a great variety of questions might come 
up for discussion. The whole field is too large to be fully 
and properly presented in this paper. But we have brought 
matters down to the beginning of the present century, and 
most of us have a general idea of the course of events in 
these recent times. It is to be hoped that by and by we shall 
replace in our churches the congregational singing so long 
practiced by our fathers, with a congregational singing that 
shall be truly noble nnd worthy. Already in many of our 
congregations such singing has been fully realized. 



102 

The choir sung an anthem entitled the " Pilgrim Chorus." 

Then Rev, Mr. Jewett read a brief paper containing the 
outline facts of his pastorate, especially with reference to a 
precious revival of religion which occurred at that time. 

Rev. Mr. Leete then spoke very briefly of his memories of 
the fourteen years spent with this people. Here he was 
ordained to the ministry, here all his children were born. 
This house had just been renovated, and was then rededi- 
cated. He alluded to the men then living, who had since 
passed away, and expressed kind wishes for the future of the 
old Church. 

Short addresses were then made by Rev. J. P. Longworthy, 
D.D., " Father " Gleason, Rev. Francis Williams, Rev. George 
I. Wood, and Dr. W. T, Holcomb, all of which were of great 
interest, reviving the memories of former days, and alluding 
to many honored names with which the past history of the 
Church is so rich. 

Many letters of congratulation and reminiscences were 
received from persons who could not be present at the meet- 
ing. These were read to the Church on Sunday evening, 
April 4th. Among the most noteworthy of these were the 
letters of Rev. Samuel Wolcott, D.D., of Cleveland, Ohio, 
Henry Lyman of Montreal, Judge Henry Morris of Spring- 
field, Mass., Prof. Edward Rowland Sill, of University of Cali- 
fornia; Rev. James Anderson, of Manchester, N. H., Deacon 
Ebenezer Clap of Dorchester, Mass., Rev. Silas Ketchum 
of Poquonuck, and Lathrop Stiles Ellis of Manistee, Mich- 
Others, containing a brief excuse and good wishes were read 
from Rev. A. C. Washburn, Syracuse, N. Y., J. W. Barber, 
New Haven, 0. E. Wood, New York, Rev. Charles Ray Palmer, 
Bridgeport, and others ; also from different descendants of 
Rev. Mr. Warliam and of Rev. Mr. Hinsdale. 

The following original hymn sung at the dedication of 
this church in 1794 was read : 

O God, our king, tliis joyful day. 

We dedicate this house to Tliee; 
Here wouhl we meet to siug and pray, 

And learn how sweet thy dwellinsjfs be. 



103 

O King of saints and triune God, 

Bow the high heavens and lend Thine ear, 
And make this house Thy fixed abode, 

And let Thy heavenly Dove rest here. 

"Within these vralls may Jesus' charm 
Allure ten thousand souls to love. 

And all, supported by Thy grace, 

Shine bright in realms of bliss al)ove. 



Miss May Talcott of Hartford, another of the many descendants of 
Rev. Mr. Warham, furnishes additional names to add to those in the 
foot-note on page 26. Among those who have become somewhat noted, 
may be mentioned Aaron Burr, Gen. Wm. Williams, signer of the Dec- 
laration of Independence, Hon. John Sherman, Rev. Samuel A. Worces- 
ter, D.D., Rev. Jonathan Edwards Woodbridge, D.D. Also ex-President 
Woolsey, of Yale College, has been mentioned, and Judge Henry Morris, 
of Springfield, closes his most interesting letter by saying, " Personally, I 
feel that I may claim some peculiar relations to Windsor, and your an- 
cient church. I can trace my lineal descent from Rev. John Warham, 
its first minister." 

The following extract from the " Dwight Genealogy " has been sent for 
insertion : 

" In the history of the opinions and preaching of these three men, re- 
lated to each other as father-in-law, son, and grandson, John Warham, 
Solomon Stoddard, and Jonathan Edwards, in a close circuit, surely, 
both of relationship, and of residence. The great controversy which 
shook all New England to its center a century ago, had its historical be- 
ginning, middle, and end. None of their many titled descendants in 
Church and State have surpassed in wisdom, eloquence, grace, and influ- 
ence, those untitled giants of the elder days of this their rude, new 
world." 



OFFICERS OF THE CHURCH. 



Pastoe, 
Rev. GOWEN C. WILSON. 

Deacons, 

John B. Woodford, 
Daniel Payne. 



Pastors and Teachers from the First. 

Rev. John Warham, Pastor, - - 1630-1670 

Rev. John Maverick, Teacher, - - 1630-1636 

Rev. Bphraim Huit, Teacher, - - 1639-1644 

Rev. Nathaniel Chauncey, Pastor, - - 1667-1679 

Rev. Samuel Mather, Pastor, ■ - - 1681-1727 

Rev. Jonathan Marsh, Pastor, - - 1709-1747 

Rev. William Russell, Pastor, - - 1751-1775 

Rev. David S. Rowland, Pastor, - - 1776-1794 

Rev. Henry A. Rowland, Pastor, - - 1790-1835 

Rev. Charles Walker, Pastor, - - 1836-1837 

Rev. Spofford D. Jewett, Pastor, - - 1839-1843 

Rev. Theodore A. Leete, Pastor, - - 1845-1859 

Rev. Benjamin Parsons, Pastor, - - 1861-1865 

Rev. Gowen C. Wilson began his ministry, March, 1866 

Ordained, October, Pastor. - - - 1867 



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